ECONOMY
A team from MyAccount initiative instruct civil servants in Erbil about withdrawing cash from ATMs through debit card. Photo: file/Rudaw
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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani has transferred control of MyAccount, a government initiative to digitize financial services, to the finance ministry, shifting oversight away from his office, a senior official said on Sunday. The move is an apparent effort to end a long-standing dispute between the two main ruling parties over the program and pave the way for the formation of a new cabinet.
“On the basis of an order from His Excellency the Prime Minister, it has been decided to transfer the digitization process of KRG civil servants’ salaries (MyAccount) to the Ministry of Finance and Economy,” read a letter from Umed Sabah, head of the KRG’s Diwan.
The letter also noted that “the accounts belonging to civil servants will be protected in accordance with applicable laws and regulations enacted by the Central Bank of Iraq.”
Rudaw reported on Saturday that the ruling Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) will endorse MyAccount after reaching an agreement with the Region’s dominant Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) on several key points, including transferring the project to the finance ministry’s jurisdiction and gaining access to the contracts signed with participating banks.
MyAccount serves as the Kurdistan Region’s alternative to Baghdad’s Tawtin (localization) initiative, which also aims to pay public sector salaries through bank accounts instead of distributing cash. In Sulaimani, many have preferred Tawtin over MyAccount, citing skepticism about the KRG’s ability to transfer federal funds received from Baghdad.
The PUK had long opposed MyAccount, advocating instead for opening branches of federal banks in Sulaimani to register civil servants under Tawtin.
However, the PUK’s stance shifted significantly following the initiation of government formation talks with the KDP. Both parties have announced that they are very close to the announcement of a final agreement on the new cabinet, more than half a year after the Region’s parliamentary elections.
“I repeatedly chanted for Tawtin during the electoral campaigns because I believed it had elements that were better than the one implemented here [MyAccount],” PUK leader Bafel Talabani said in an interview aired Saturday on his party’s media.
“After extraordinary negotiations [with the MyAccount team], we identified very good points - and some that may need to be modified,” he added. “If we reach an agreement with the KDP, we will utilize good elements from both.”
Nevertheless, during the October 2024 election campaign, Talabani had declared: “Don’t register for MyAccount - it belongs to Masrour [Barzani, the Prime Minister]. Do Tawtin instead.”
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