SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The federal government will transfer 200 billion Iraqi dinars ($137 million) to the Kurdistan Region next week, a Kurdish official said on Saturday.
Faris Issa, head of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) representative office in Baghdad, said the Iraqi council of ministers had decided to transfer the money to the Region on August 25.
“The transfer of the money will continue and it is fixed until the implementation of the budget law,” Issa told Esta Media Network.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi agreed to transfer 200 billion dinars per month to the Kurdistan Region following a phone call with Kurdish premier Masrour Barzani in June.
Barzani said they had reached “a deal that will see federal budget payments restored to the KRI and backdated to Jan 2021”.
The federal government transferred the amount last month to be used to pay salaries of public servants in the Kurdistan Region.
After months of wrangling, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the central government reached an agreement on thorny issues, including oil and non-oil revenues.
Under the 2021 budget law, the Kurdistan Region will be committed to produce 460,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).
After deducting expenses for production operations in the Region, transport of oil and the domestic consumption of crude oil, the KRG must hand over to Baghdad revenues generated from regional oil exports of 250,000 bpd, according to Iraq’s SOMO pricing, as well as 50 percent of non-oil revenue.
The Kurdistan Region, in return, will receive its share of the budget.
