Baghdad, Iraq ? Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is proposing a $7.4 billion boost in public spending next year in an aggressive budget designed to stimulate industry and speed repairs of tattered roads, sewers and utilities.

It also would give more fiscal power to the country’s 18 provinces by increasing their budgets more than 50 percent on average.

The increased spending, which would raise Iraq’s annual budget to $48 billion, largely would be financed by a projected 12 percent increase in oil revenues and by money that was not spent last year because of inefficiency.

The budget’s optimism is driven in part by the expectation that oil prices, now at record levels, will stay high. Iraq’s crude production, which dipped earlier this year, has rebounded since August, climbing slightly above the national target of 2.1 million gallons a day, according to a U.S. State Department report.

The Los Angeles Times obtained a copy of the budget that has circulated among Iraqi and U.S. officials.

The new budget, which will be discussed by parliament Sunday, would raise spending overall by 18 percent and set clear priorities.

Spending on social programs, education and health, which together account for about 10 percent of the budget, would stay flat or gain only moderately, in effect losing ground to other faster-growing ministries.

The budget includes hefty proposed increases for the ministries of defense and interior. Totaling $9 billion, the ministries overseeing the army and police account for nearly 19 percent of proposed spending.

In addition, a new national intelligence agency would be allocated $83 million; a new directorate for disarming militias: $70 million.

Capital projects would grow by nearly one-third. Funding for government-owned factories, which account for about 70 percent of Iraq’s industrial base and mostly stand idle, would increase fivefold.