Kurdistan Government secures federal funding for security salaries

Shafaq News/ On Thursday, The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) announced that the federal government decided to pay the salaries of the Region’s security and military forces for May and June, after a call between the Prime Minister of the KRG, Masrour Barzani, and the Prime Minister of the Federal Government, Muhammad Shia al-Sudani.

Last Tuesday, Minister of Peshmerga Affairs, Shoresh Ismail, said that the federal government had agreed to pay the salaries of the Peshmerga forces.

In recent months, the federal government has funded monthly salaries for employees in the Kurdistan Region, excluding military personnel.

In recent months, the Federal Government has been covering the monthly salaries of employees in the Kurdistan Region, except for military personnel.

Kurdish officials in the Regional Government clarified that the issue is not related to political or legal problems. Instead, it arises from technical challenges and the process of verifying the lists of Peshmerga and Internal Security Force members.

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.