ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Deputy Prime Mnister of the Kurdistan Region Qubad Talabani said Thursday that his government has cut its operating budget by nearly 50 percent and that civil servants do not have to fear for their salaries. “I would like to reiterate our pledge that no one’s salary will be lost. That is probably not clear to the public masses,” Talabani said on the closing day of the two-day Economic Forum of Erbil’s Middle East Research Institute (MERI). “We have made a comprehensive revision of the operational budget to reduce it by 46 percent of what we were spending,” Talabani added. Talabani was speaking on the closing panel of the forum, whose aim was to have experts and officials come together to discuss solutions for Kurdistan’s severe economic crisis. Talabani confessed that between 2005 and 2013, when Kurdistan was experiencing an amazing economic boom fuelled by high oil prices, the government had failed to plan for a day when those revenues would shrink. “We had a culture in the past like it was raining money all the time and that it is from own oil,” he said. “There was no planning to have a reaction against any unexpected negative economic situation,” he confessed. He also explained that as an autonomous region inside Iraq, Kurdistan did not have – and does not have – a free hand on its fiscal policies. “We have limited entitlement to ask for (foreign) loans,” he said. “There are those ready to provide us with loans, but that is not the only way to lift us out of the current financial and economic crisis – the most dangerous crisis that we face,” he said. Talabani said that austerity measures such as cutting government expenses are not enough. He said revenues needed to be raised through other means. “We must also think about diversifying, raising revenues from means such as taxes, collecting for services such as electricity and water, through traffic fines,” he said.
