Baghdad Agrees to Pay the Kurdish Public Salaries
2023/07/27

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Baghdad has agreed to release the Kurdistan Region’s public salaries following days of intensive discussions between the Kurdistan Region and Iraqi federal authorities, a senior Kurdish official announced.

“Both sides [Erbil and Baghdad] agreed to implement the [federal] budget clauses related to the Kurdistan Region,” Umed Sabah, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President of Diwan, wrote in a social media post on Wednesday overnight.

Baghdad will immediately begin to send the Kurdish region’s financial entitlements, Sabah added.

Following a call between Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al-Sudani and Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Wednesday, a KRG delegation visited Baghdad to discuss the outstanding issues between the two governments in order to pave the way for implementing the budget law.

Kurdistan Region’s public employees have not yet received their July salaries. The KRG has called on Baghdad to release the Kurdish employees’ payments, as Erbil is no longer in charge of selling its oil, whose revenues were used to be spent on covering public expenses.

The public salaries will be dispensed as soon as Baghdad releases the financial entitlements, KRG Spokesperson Peshawa Hawramani said in a statement on Thursday.

Per the budget deal, the Iraqi oil marketing company, known as SOMO, would be in charge of selling the Kurdish oil following years of independent exports by the KRG.

Erbil has been transferring 50,000-60,000 barrels of oil on a daily basis to Baghdad in line with the agreement it had inked with Baghdad, which will be responsible for paying the salaries as well as covering other public expenditures, a senior KRG official told Kurdistan 24 recently.

Prior to the stoppage, the Kurdistan Region was exporting over 400,000 barrels of oil per day through a pipeline to Turkey’s Ceyhan port.

The management of oil and gas has been a contentious issue between Erbil and Baghdad for over a decade.

Iraq passed its three-year budget bill in June, considered to be one of the country’s budgets.

The state expenditures are set at 198.91 trillion Iraqi dinars ($153 billion) with a deficit of more than 64 trillion dinars (over $48 billion).

The Kurdistan Region’s share in the federal budget is set at 12.67 percent, amounting to more than $12 billion annually.