Kurdistan Regional Government: The region receives one dollar and pays 26 dollars to settle Baghdad’s debts.
Kurdistan Regional Government: The region receives one dollar and pays 26 dollars to settle Baghdad’s debts.
2026-02-09 08:43
Shafaq News – Erbil
The Kurdistan Regional Government confirmed on Monday that there is a great injustice in the loan file from the federal government, while indicating that the region pays $26 for every dollar of loan it receives from Baghdad.
The government said in a statement received by Shafaq News Agency that “the financial data of the federal general budget, during the past two decades (2005-2025), proved the existence of a serious and systematic error aimed at reducing the financial entitlements of the Kurdistan Region. The federal government, through the unprecedented expansion of sovereign expenditures, and the application of the actual spending mechanism, has transformed the constitutional entitlements of the region from a fixed right into mere numbers on paper.”
She explained that “sovereign expenditures, which in 2005 were limited to (the presidencies, and the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense), were expanded in the budgets of the years (2023-2025) to reach approximately 47.4 trillion dinars annually.
She pointed out that “through this inflation, and under the name of sovereign expenditures, several items were included, such as the costs of oil production, the budget of the Popular Mobilization Forces, and loans, which turned these expenditures into a tool to drain the region’s share before it arrives, as the region bears a burden of 8.7 trillion dinars annually to cover those expenditures.”
She stressed that “in the file of external and internal loans, a clear financial injustice is being practiced against the region. While the Kurdistan Region is obligated to pay 1.6 trillion dinars annually, which represents its share of the repayment of Iraqi sovereign loans, it receives only 62.4 billion dinars as its share of those loans. This means that for every dollar the region receives as a loan, it pays 26 dollars to repay loans that the federal government spent in other parts of Iraq.”
She added: “The federal government, by adopting the actual spending mechanism, instead of the approved allocation, has linked the budget and salaries of the region’s employees to the level of project implementation in the central and southern governorates. This is a collective financial punishment, because according to Article (121/Third) of the Constitution, the region’s share should be based on needs and population ratio, not on the size of the ministries’ spending in Baghdad. These measures have led to an automatic reduction in the region’s share with every stoppage of any project being implemented in other Iraqi cities.”
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