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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Region’s president and prime minister on Saturday slammed last minute changes to the three-year federal draft budget and called on Iraqi lawmakers to honour agreements made between Erbil and Baghdad.
The Iraqi parliament’s finance committee on Thursday amended two articles that pertain to the Kurdistan Region. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) declared the changes “unconstitutional.” The dispute means passage of the budget into law has been delayed.
On Saturday morning, President Nechirvan Barzani said he was “deeply concerned” about the changes.
“Jumping on understandings and agreements and trying to violate the constitutional rights of the Kurdistan Region is completely contrary to national responsibility and it won’t yield anything other than disappointment and complicating the political stability of the country. It will harm the whole of Iraq,” he said in a statement.
He called on the ruling parties to commit to existing agreements and for Kurdish parties to be united.
A few hours earlier, Prime Minister Masrour Barzani expressed his own disapproval of the amendments.
“A group in the Iraqi parliament’s finance committee have introduced changes to the draft federal budget, violating the agreement [with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani’s government],” he tweeted, referring to a deal to resume exports of Kurdistan Region’s oil that were halted following a ruling in an arbitration case between Baghdad and Ankara.
“The agreement is the bedrock for cooperation between Erbil & Baghdad and the word of parties to it must be honored,” PM Barzani added.
The amendments under dispute relate to establishing Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO) as the responsible party for selling Kurdistan Region’s oil, decreasing the time for Erbil to pay off its debts from seven years to five, creating an account for Kurdistan Region's oil revenues in the Iraqi central bank, and granting the finance minister the power to authorize the Region's prime minister to make withdrawals from that account. In the previous draft, that power was held by the Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani.
Parliament was scheduled to vote on the budget bill on Saturday, but it was indefinitely postponed late Friday.
The 2023 budget includes a record $152 billion in spending, 12.6 percent of which is allocated for the Kurdistan Region.
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