ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Kurdish members of Iraq’s parliament may attempt to amend the draft 2021 federal budget, a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) MP suggested to state media on Monday, claiming that the full size of the Kurdistan Region’s population is not reflected in the 12.67% currently assigned to it. "The paragraph containing the [Kurdistan] Region’s share confirmed in the draft budget probably will not be passed as agreed upon between the federal government and KRG, but will be amended," Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) MP and member of the finance committee Shirwan Mirza told Iraqi News Agency (INA) on Monday. “We will do our best to work on this matter.” “The population in three governorates in the Kurdistan Region, to which Halabja will be added within the Sulaimani province, requires a share that is worth 14% of the federal budget, not 12.67%," he explained. The KRG’s share of the draft budget is the same as it was the previous year. In the 2019 budget law, the Kurdistan Region’s share was 12.67 percent. Baghdad applied the same law for 2020, after a failure by Iraqi political parties to agree on a new budget bill. The Kurdistan Region’s population can be estimated to be 5.45 million, according to figures given to Rudaw on Tuesday by Iraq's planning ministry spokesperson Abdulzahra Hindawi – about 13.7 percent of Iraq's population. The particulars in the 2021 bill were agreed upon after intense negotiations with a delegation from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). "The Region's share in the budget has been specified. It is clear," the Region’s deputy prime minister Qubad Talabani said announcing the agreement on December 22, though he added the budget share is "less than what we expected and deserve." The budget has been a point of contention between Erbil and Baghdad for several years, especially after the Kurdistan Region's decision to sell its oil through Turkey, and the Islamic State (ISIS) attack on Iraq in 2014. Both governments are struggling financially. The KRG has been failing to pay its civil servants on time and in full, while the Iraqi government had to take out loans from its central bank to pay the salaries of its civil servants for the last three months of 2020. According to a member of the Iraqi parliament's finance committee, Iraq faces a $71 trillion dinar deficit this year. The KRG's Deputy Minister of Planning Zagros Fatah on January 7 said the Kurdistan Region's own budget depends on whether the agreement with Baghdad is implemented, and the autonomous region receives federal funding, in an interview with Rudaw's Sangar Abdulrahman. "If the Iraqi parliament approves the Iraqi budget bill the way we have agreed and with the terms we have set for our share, then our share of the federal government's budget will be our main source of income, based on which we will prepare the budget bill," he said. "However if like in previous years, the federal government refuses to send our share of the budget, we will have to take other measures such as using our border crossing revenue, the revenue of our non-oil products, and selling our oil to set a base for the bill."
