Kurdistan’s finance minister calls on al-Zaydi to treat the region as a “constitutional entity” and not as a province.
Kurdistan’s finance minister calls on al-Zaydi to treat the region as a “constitutional entity” and not as a province.
2026-09-17
Shafaq News – Sulaymaniyah
The Minister of Finance and Economy of the Kurdistan Region, Awat Sheikh Janab Nouri, complained on Thursday about the mechanism adopted by the federal government in calculating the region’s share within the country’s general financial budget, calling on Prime Minister Ali al-Zubaidi to deal with Kurdistan as a “constitutional and legal entity” and not as a governorate or accounting unit.
Nouri said in a speech during the economic summit held in Sulaymaniyah that “there is a fundamental problem facing the budget and affecting all of Iraq, which is the size of sovereign expenditures that have become a heavy burden, exceeding 40% of the total budget,” adding that “the region is subjected to great injustice as a result of deducting these expenditures first before determining its share, which reduces its allocations to very low levels.”
He explained that “the region only benefits from a very small percentage of the governing expenditures, despite them being deducted from its share, and it does not benefit at all from internal and external loans,” noting that “the actual expenditure law is emptied of its content with regard to Kurdistan, as it is calculated for 15 governorates in Iraq and then the region’s share is extracted from it, unlike the rest of the regions, which necessitates the full implementation of the Federal Court’s decision to include the salaries of the region’s employees within the actual expenditures.”
The Minister of Finance added that “the regional government has not benefited from ‘one dinar’ of investment expenditures since 2013 until now, despite fulfilling all its obligations, foremost among them reviewing employee lists and implementing the biometric system at a rate of 90%.”
Regarding the other outstanding issues, Nouri confirmed that “an agreement has been reached to resolve the problems related to companies, taxes, customs tariffs, and border crossings, and all that remains is for an official decision to be issued by the Federal Cabinet to begin implementation and end the suffering of traders and investors.”
He pointed out that “the region’s negotiating delegation sensed an understanding from Baghdad regarding the need to increase oil production and export rates in accordance with the OPEC quota, which would solve many financial crises,” urging Prime Minister Ali al-Zubaidi to direct the council to deal directly with the region in accordance with constitutional frameworks, and to lift the financial injustice against Kurdistan through coordination between the Federal Council of Ministers and the Kurdistan Council of Ministers.
shafaq.com
