Iraq’s population now over 40 million: planning ministry

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraq’s population has surpassed 40 million, the country’s planning ministry said on Tuesday – with 40 percent of the population under the age of 15.

"Iraq's population reached 40,150,000 people in 2020", the ministry said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Children aged 0-14 make up 40.4 percent of Iraq’s population, the ministry said. People aged 15-64 and make up 56.5 percent of the population.

Just three percent of Iraqis are over the age of 65, the ministry said.

The ministry’s figures are based on its “central statistical system, as per international standards”, according to its statement.

The Kurdistan Region’s population can be estimated to be 5.45 million, according to figures given to Rudaw by planning ministry spokesperson Abdulzahra Hindawi – about 13.7 percent of Iraq's population.

“Sulaimani has the largest population [of Kuridstan Region provinces], which is more than 2.25 million, followed by Erbil province which has 1.9 million people, and Duhok has nearly 1.3 million people,” Hindawi told Rudaw’s Shahyan Tahseen on Tuesday.

“Every year [since 2010], the population has increased by 2.6 percent – meaning the population [of the Kurdistan Region] has increased by 850,000 to one million people,” the spokesperson said.

The planning ministries of both Iraq and the Kurdistan Region predicted in 2018 that the Region’s population would fall from 18 percent to 14.9 percent.

Sirwan Mohammed, head of Kurdistan Region’s statistics department, warned at the time that slow population growth could put the Region on the back foot on issues like its share of the federal budget – already a contentious topic.

There has not been an official census in Iraq since 1997. That census did not include the Kurdistan Region. 

The Iraqi government has said multiple times since that it would conduct a census.

A census planned for 2020 was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, planning minister Khaled Battal al-Najm said in August.