Kurdish finance committee in Iraqi parliament to meet with KRG officials, MPs

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Kurdish finance committee members in the Iraqi parliament are going to meet with officials from the KRG and Kurdish parliament on Tuesday to discuss the controversial Iraqi budget which was passed amid a Kurdish boycott and numerous demands and reservations.

“The four Kurdish members of the Iraqi parliament finance committee are scheduled to meet the KRG Council of Ministers and the parliamentary leadership, and their legal and finance committees,” Masoud Haider, member of the Iraqi parliament finance committee, told Rudaw.

Haider added the aim of the meeting “would be to discuss the share of the Kurdistan Region in the 2018 budget law in general.”

“We are going to make more clarifications of the KRG share to the Kurdistan Region officials,” he noted.

The Iraqi parliament passed its 2018 budget bill on Saturday afternoon after more than three months of disputes.

Kurds claim their share is neither sufficient nor fair.

The bulk of Kurdish demands were not met despite mounting pressure on the parliament and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to increase the KRG share to its original 17 percent.

Iraq’s budget for 2018 is about 104 trillion dinars [about $88 billion]. The Iraqi budget operates with a deficit of 12.5 trillion dinars [$10.58 billion]. The budget is based on a projected oil price of $46 per barrel and a daily export capacity of 3.8 million barrels.

The KRG’s share stands at 6.6 trillion dinars, a monthly sum of 558 billion dinars. The KRG, however, has on numerous occasions said it needs 850 billion dinars to pay its civil servants on a monthly basis. The economic crisis has forced the KRG to reduce this to 600 billion dinars. There are 1.249 million people on the KRG’s payroll, according to its figures.

Erbil says its revenues have been nearly halved since the loss of the Kirkuk oil fields to the Iraqi government in mid-October, leaving the government with a net of $337.4 million (about 400 billion dinars) for salaries after deducting essential expenses and payments to international energy companies.

Kurdish finance committee in Iraqi parliament to meet with KRG officials, MPs

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