Concerns growing over worsening food security in Kurdistan Region

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Nearly 2 percent of the population in Kurdistan Region lack the financial resources to secure their three daily meals regularly, according to a recent survey conducted by the Ministry of Planning on food security in the country following the financial meltdown of the past three years. 

The survey also shows that the food security has worsened in recent years compared to the other provinces in Iraq where some 53 percent of the population have sufficient economic means to have three meals a day while the figure is around 38 percent for the Kurdistan Region. The figures show that only 1 percent of the Iraqis are unable to secure their meals. 

“One main reason behind the decline of food security in Kurdistan is that around 52 percent of the people are dependent on wages that have over the past year seen notable reductions,” said Sirwan Muhammad, head of the Kurdistan Region Office of Statistics. 

As part of the robust austerity measures aimed at offsetting the staggering budget deficit in 2016, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) reduced the salaries of its nearly 1,3 million people on its payroll, some by nearly 50 percent or more. 

The recovery plan seems to have yielded positive results as the budget gap has been narrowing in 2016, but it has done little to create the needed jobs and investments, according to government reports. 

The annual personal income in Kurdistan Region was around $5000 in 2014, but following the plummeting oil prices and ISIS war the incomes have declined, although no recent data are available, according to the ministry.   

A recent study completed in August last year showed unprecedented levels of poverty in the Kurdistan Region’s three provinces of Dohuk, Erbil, and Sulaimani. 

The study, which was done in coordination between the World Bank and the Kurdish Ministry of Planning and Office of the Statistics in the region, showed that poverty levels increased dramatically, nearly tripling from 3.5 percent at the start of 2013, before the ISIS war and the subsequent refugee crisis, to a record high 12 percent in 2015.

Unemployment rates have also risen steadily since 2013 from 6.3 percent to 12 percent in 2015, according to the study. 

The international poverty line according to the World Bank is $1.25 a day.
        
Nearly 680,000 people of an estimated 5.5 million in the Region live on less than 105,000 Iraqi dinars (around $87) per month, which is the poverty line index in Iraq and Kurdistan according to World Bank standards.