An IMF paper published in February 2023 examines how fuel constraints, underinvestment, billing and collection problems, and network losses interact in Iraq’s electricity sector. It distinguishes installed generating capacity from output actually available to the system and technical losses from electricity consumed without a corresponding bill.
The fiscal account also looks beyond direct budget spending. Supplying fuel to generators below an international reference price can create an implicit cost, while weak collection affects the cash available for operations and investment. These are different measures and should not be added together without matching the paper’s accounting definitions.
The paper is a framework for reading sector economics, based principally on earlier years. Its historical loss, output and subsidy estimates are not measurements of the grid in October 2026.