ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A high-level Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) delegation is set to visit the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Tuesday and discuss budget issues with the Iraqi parliament’s finance committee the following day.
The KRG delegation will consist of Finance Minister Awat Sheikh Janab, Head of the Diwan of the Kurdistan Region's Council of Ministers Omed Sabah, cabinet Secretary Amanj Rahim, and several other officials and advisors, according to a statement from the government’s media and information department.
KRG Spokesperson Peshawa Hawramani said that the Kurdish delegation’s visit is a testament to Erbil’s “serious intention” to resolve all budget issues with Baghdad, adding that the delegation has been instructed by Prime Minister Masrour Barzani to “leave no question unanswered and be transparently cooperative.”
The Kurdistan Region’s civil servants went unpaid for around 90 days, before a deal was struck between Baghdad and Erbil after months of talks in mid-September, in which the federal government agreed to lend the KRG 2.1 trillion Iraqi dinars to pay the salaries for three months.
The delay in paying salaries has exacerbated the concerns of the Kurdistan Region’s civil servants, many of whose livelihoods depend solely on state wages. The civil servants are yet to receive August salaries.
The Kurdish government has failed to pay its civil servants on time and in full for nearly a decade due to the financial crisis. Economic woes in the Kurdistan Region have worsened in recent months 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.
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