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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) delegation will be looking for a long-lasting agreement when it visits the federal government in Baghdad this week to secure the Kurdish share in Iraq's 2021 budget draft, a KRG representative said on Saturday.
"Kurdistan wants a once and for all agreement based on the Iraqi constitution," KRG representative to Baghdad Faris Issa told Rudaw. "The rights of the people of the Kurdistan Region should be given and secured as stipulated in the constitution,” Issa said.
"There is certainly hope, there is a pure intention, there is will between the two sides. The preparation of the budget bill is also a step and an opportunity to reach an agreement.”
Iraqi finance minister Ali Allawi told Rudaw on Monday that a “senior and important” KRG delegation would visit Baghdad "either this week or next week” to resolve any outstanding issues there may be in the 2021 Iraqi budget draft. The delegation is set to be led by KRG deputy prime minister Qubad Talabani.
A lower-level KRG delegation, including deputy planning minister Zagros Fatah and head of the finance ministry's budget department Parikhan Nuri, arrived in Baghdad on August 30 to participate in 2021 budget draft preparations.
Mahmoud Abu Risha, a member of the Iraqi parliament's Sairoon bloc, told Rudaw on Saturday that oil export and revenue are the main points of contention between Erbil and Baghdad, with the Kurdistan Region having failed to adhere to an agreement with Baghdad which includes turning over 250,000 barrels of oil a day to Iraq’s State Organization for the Marketing of Oil (SOMO), a state-owned oil company.
"The solution is to hold negotiations between the KRG and the central government, and a law should be issued by both sides that prevent both Erbil and Baghdad from violating the agreement,” Abu Risha said.
The KRG's share of the Iraqi federal budget is a chronic point of contention between Erbil and Baghdad. The Kurdistan Region is heavily dependent on its share of the Iraqi budget, and Kurdish officials have said they cannot pay civil servants without what it says is its fair share of federal government money.
The KRG delegation visits to Baghdad come after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month that he had urged the Iraqi federal government to “clinch a budget deal” with the KRG.
Pompeo's comment followed KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi's announcement last month that they had reached a temporary deal, in which Baghdad will send 320 billion dinars ($270 million) monthly to Erbil for the KRG to pay its civil servants.
Before the August agreement between premiers Barzani and Kadhimi, Baghdad had not sent funds since April, worsening the KRG's failure to pay complete and full public sector employee salaries this year.
KRG public sector employees have taken to the streets over delays in salary payments. Demonstrations and strikes calling on the KRG's current cabinet to resign have occurred several times in Sulaimani province, while protests by teachers in May over delayed pay in Duhok were shut down.
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