College of Law

Does the amended Government Debt Collection Law No. 56 of 1977 apply to government departments?
A specialized legal article by Assistant Professor Dr. Saddam Hazal Yahya.
A debt relationship may arise between one government department and its counterpart from another department, meaning one department becomes a creditor and the other a debtor.
Is it possible to apply the aforementioned law to collect government debts? And thus, take coercive enforcement measures against the debtor department?
To answer this, we say that the above law is a special law whose scope and application are limited exclusively to debt relationships between the state and citizens for the purpose of collecting debts and similar fees, fines, and other matters. Therefore, it cannot be expanded to include financial relationships and debts between these departments for the following reasons:
1- The provisions of the aforementioned law cannot be applied to debtor departments, particularly with regard to coercive enforcement procedures, such as seizing movable and immovable assets originally belonging to them, due to the legal prohibition against this.
2- Settlement of government debts between departments is often accomplished through financial and administrative means, pursuant to instructions issued by the Ministry of Finance or the Council of Ministers, as these debts and financial relationships are subject to the principle of government financial unity.
3- The foregoing does not prevent the creditor department from resorting to the judiciary to obtain judicial rulings on these debts. However, their implementation will also be in accordance with the aforementioned, but through binding, enforceable rulings.

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