SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The Kurdistan Region’s share of the federal budget for 2021 will be reduced as the Iraqi parliament’s committee of finance has slashed expenditures from the draft budget law, a lawmaker said on Sunday.
Shirwan Mirza, a Kurdish lawmaker in the Iraqi Council of Representatives, said the finance committee had slashed expenditures from 164 trillion dinars to nearly 130 trillion in the federal budget for 2021.
The committee also slashed deficit by more than 30 trillion dinars, according to Mirza. The budget bill included a 71-trillion-dinar deficit.
“The Kurdistan Region’s share will also be reduced even if the bill is adopted without any problem,” Mirza told Esta Media Network.
The Region’s share was 13.9 trillion dinars in the federal budget bill. “It is still unclear how much the amount will be, but it is 12.67%,” Mirza said.
The 2021 federal budget bill is expected to be approved next week, according to the lawmaker.
A delegation from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) led by Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani will visit Baghdad on Sunday for more talks on the Region’s share with the Iraqi parliament’s committee of finance.
Talabani who led a high-level delegation to Baghdad said in December that the KRG and the federal government had reached an agreement over the 2021 federal budget bill, approved by the Iraqi Council of Ministers in the same month.
The draft budget law commits the Kurdistan Region to export 250,000 barrels of oil per day through Baghdad in exchange for the Region’s share of the budget.
