Kurdistan Region receives nearly 500 billion dinars for civil servant salaries

Shafaq News/ On Tuesday, the Ministry of Finance and Economy in the Kurdistan Region announced that 421 billion and 760 million dinars had been deposited in its bank account by the Federal Government to pay the salaries of civil servants for last June.

Due to oil exports, the Kurdistan Region previously had independent funding that partly covered salaries. However, a dispute involving the federal government and Turkiye, the route through which oil was exported, has blocked this income source for the regional administration since March 2023.

Iraqi Kurdistan and Baghdad later reached a preliminary agreement for Kurdish oil sales to pass through the federal government. In exchange, the autonomous region will receive 12.6 percent of Iraq's public spending.

In a court ruling, the Kurdish administration was ordered to transfer "all its oil and non-oil revenues" to the federal government and undergo an audit of relevant accounts.

With oil revenues ceased, Kurdistan's current main revenue source is taxes collected at border crossings with neighboring countries, including Iran and Turkiye, two of Iraq's major regional trade partners.