“There is no salary, nothing,” Iskandar Rahim, an Erbil resident, told Rudaw on Friday. “Everything has become so expensive and people do not dare to go to the market.”
Sdiq Ahmad, another resident of Erbil, commented on how quiet the market was when he went to do some shopping.
"If they have salaries, people would buy necessities such as meat, chicken, and other home necessities, but now people cannot afford them,” he said. “People are borrowing money for the month of Ramadan.”
Market vendors say that government delays in distributing salaries have slowed their business and many goods are priced beyond the reach of their customers.
Committees from Erbil’s governor’s office are actively overseeing market activity and plan to expand their monitoring during the holy month of Ramadan to more effectively curb price hikes. Shops are usually busy during Ramadan as people buy special foods for the holy month and clothing ahead of Eid.
“A kilogram of meat has gone up to 20,000 [Iraqi dinars]. It is very expensive,” said Gaylan Maghdid, a butcher.
It has been 40 days since the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) last distributed salaries for its civil servants and pensioners.
The government has failed to pay its civil servants on time and in full for nearly a decade. The situation worsened over the past year after Turkey suspended the flow of Kurdish crude oil through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to its Ceyhan port in March following a ruling from a Paris arbitration court, causing the KRG billions of dollars in losses.
Without the funds to meet its payroll, the KRG has turned to Baghdad, which is sending Erbil 618 billion dinars monthly.