Aoun Diab, a senior adviser to the Ministry of Water Resources, attributed this decline to the lack of rain and the weak flow from neighboring countries.
Last week, an Iraqi government official told AFP that water supplies in Iraq have halved compared to 2021 due to lack of rainfall and declining river flow from neighboring countries.
Iraq, which is rich in oil and gas, is one of the five countries in the world most affected by climate change and desertification, and water is a major issue in this semi-desert country of 41 million people.
"The available water storage is currently less than what we had last year by about 50%, due to the lack of rainfall and the low flow from neighboring countries," said Aoun Diab, a senior consultant to the Ministry of Water Resources.
Drought and water shortages have already forced Iraq to reduce by half cultivated areas for the 2021-2022 winter season.
Iraq shares its waters, which it obtains from several rivers, especially the Tigris and Euphrates, with Turkey and Syria, as well as with Iran. According to Baghdad, the construction of dams by its neighbors on the waters of the rivers reduces their flow when they reach Iraq.
Diab also referred to the "consecutive drought years: 2020, 2021 and 2022. All of this had a strong impact on the situation in Iraq."
He continued, "It certainly gives us a warning about how to use water this summer and winter season, and we have taken these factors into account, and are planning the agricultural season according to these figures."
In mid-April, Diab expressed confidence that the current amounts of water would be enough to meet state needs, he told the state news agency.
The World Bank has estimated that in the absence of an appropriate policy, Iraq could see a 20% decline in freshwater resources available by 2050.
In a country where infrastructure has been destroyed by repeated wars and where the rehabilitation process has slowed after ISIS counterattacks, $ 180 billion will be needed over 20 years to build new infrastructure, dams and develop irrigation projects, the bank estimated.
But in 2018, the Ministry of Water Resources' budget represented less than 0.2% of the total budget, worth $ 15 million, the World Bank said last November.