BAGHDAD, Iraq – With rows over the current year’s budget still unresolved between Baghdad and Erbil, tensions run high as Kurdish and Arab lawmakers lock horns over next year’s allocation by the central government for the autonomous northern enclave.
Some of the same rows have spilled into the latest debates.
Baghdad accuses the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of failing to account for 106 million barrels of oil allegedly exported directly by the Kurds, it refuses to pay for foreign firms involved in oil projects in Kurdistan and has withheld pay for the Kurdish Peshmarga forces that are controlled by Erbil but are constitutionally part of the armed forces.
KRG officials claim they have never received the full 17 percent of their constitutional share of the budget. Baghdad refuses to pay for oil companies working in the enclave, on grounds the contracts should have gone through the central government in Baghdad.
"Two reasons have delayed the approval of the 2014 Iraq budget,” said Heissam Jiburi, lawmaker from the State of Law Coalition, which is led by the Shiite Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. “One is the budget deficit, which is 30 percent, and the other is the dispute between Erbil and Baghdad that includes the Kurdistan Region's oil revenues and budget for Peshmarga forces."
The Iraqi national budget for 2014 is estimated at some 174 trillion Iraqi dinars (ID), with the deficit expected at 27 trillion ID.
Jiburi contends that the revenue from millions of barrels of oil from Kurdistan remains unaccounted for, based on data from the Board of Supreme Audit in Baghdad. He says that Kurdish officials are not ready to deal with the board, on grounds that the issue has been politicized.
Rashid Tahir, the KRG’s deputy minister of finance, explained that the reason for refusing to work with data from the board is because their numbers are wrong. He said that the central government must obtain the correct numbers from the Kurds themselves.
"They have to cooperate with the KRG Board of Audit and see that data before speaking about the revenues," he advised.
Another lawmaker from the State of Law Coalition took a harsher position against the KRG, suggesting that the Kurdistan Region should be cut from the national budget altogether, in order to force Erbil to submit all revenues from oil exports.
“Baghdad must cut the KRG’s budget until Erbil sends us all of its revenues from oil exported from Kurdistan in the last two years,” said MP Alia Nusaif. “This is a technical demand and there is no political agenda behind it,” she claimed.
She said that according to article 111 of the Iraqi constitution, the Kurdistan Region must submit all oil revenues to Baghdad.
According to Nusaif, most Iraqi lawmakers agree on cutting the KRG from the national budget altogether.
Meanwhile, Kurdish lawmakers appear to have dug in for a harsh fight over the budget, which has become an annual showdown between Baghdad and Erbil.
The row is fueled even more this year by direct oil exports which began this month from the Kurdistan Region to Turkey.
The rows over the 2013 budget led to a walkout by Kurdish lawmakers in the Iraqi parliament.
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