Parliamentary finance committee responds to MP's remarks on the emergency food security bill

Shafaq News/ The Parliamentary finance committee responded today, Tuesday, to MP Hanan al-Fatlawi's remarks on the Emergency bill on food security and development.

Member of the committee, Sajjad Salem, told Shafaq News agency, "There are no allocations for the governorates of the Kurdistan Region in the food security bill. In fact, the bill allocates funds to develop the regions -i.e governorates- in accordance with a criterion decided by the ministry of planning, population, and poverty rates."

"The bill allows the influx of funds into governorates. If local governments take it seriously, it will be able to provide services and build infrastructure."

Yesterday, the head of the Free Will bloc in the Iraqi parliament, Hanan al-Fatlawi, on Monday said that the emergency bill on food security and development is "unjust" to oil-producing governorates, urging the lawmakers not to approve the bill in its current form.

Speaking at a press conference in the parliament headquarters earlier today, al-Fatlawi said, "the food security bill entails an enormous grievance to our oil-producing governorates in mid and southern Iraq, to our poor governorates, and the governorates ravaged by terrorism."

"The 25-trillion-dinar-ceiling decided by the bill is ultimately are the surplus from the oil sales of the southern governorates. The bill, however, did not touch upon the surplus the Kurdistan region has yielded from selling its own oil," she said, "the Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] will share the benefits of the bill with us without paying anything from the revenues it yielded."

Al-Fatlawi urged the lawmakers to refrain from voting on the bill unless the parliament adds a new article that restricts its benefits to the 15 Iraqi governorates if the KRG does not pay the amount it yielded from the global rise of oil prices.

"Personally, I would not vote in favor of this unjust, unfair, and illegal bill," she concluded.