The top court last month ordered the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to submit a breakdown of the monthly budget for the Region’s employees’ salaries to the federal finance ministry so that Baghdad could start paying the Region’s share from the federal budget. The ruling mandates the Kurdish government to open accounts for its employees at state-owned banks – a process dubbed “localization” by Baghdad.
According to a statement from the Iraqi presidency, Jassim al-Umairi, the head of Iraq's Federal Supreme Court said following a meeting with President Abdul Latif Rashid that the top court is “keen on monitoring the mechanisms for implementing” the February ruling, adding that the Federal finance ministry is in “direct coordination” with its counterpart in the KRG to “set the overall and specifics frameworks for implementing” the ruling’s provisions.
Umairi acknowledged that the localization process takes time, stressing that technical and procedural reasons must not interrupt the payment of civil servants’ salaries.
“[KRG civil servant] salaries must be paid in cash to the remaining employees who have not completed the localization process due to technical procedures until the complete localization of salaries is achieved,” Umairi said.
Last week the Iraqi finance ministry announced that it had begun paying the Kurdistan Region’s civil servant salaries for the month of February while noting that the payment of salaries for March “will take place once the Region meets the salary settlement requirements,” referring to the opening of bank accounts for KRG employees.
Despite the federal ministry’s payment, KRG civil servants have yet to receive the salaries of February in cash. The ministry paid about 560 billion dinars, an amount that the KRG said was not enough to cover the salaries.
On Tuesday the federal ministry paid an additional 1.5 billion dinars, however, a source from the KRG’s finance ministry told Rudaw’s Hastyar Qadir that the sum still falls short of more than 387 billion dinars, the reception of which is necessary for the distribution employee of salaries for February.
The KRG on Friday said that Baghdad has sent less than half of its share of the 2023 federal budget. Erbil was due a total of about 16.5 trillion dinars (about $13 million), according to the KRG, adding that the federal government has sent around 998 billion dinars from the budget and 3.7 trillion dinars as a loan.
The cash-strapped KRG has repeatedly accused Baghdad of not making regular payments of its share of federal funds. Last June, Iraq passed a three-year budget of which the Kurdistan Region's share is 12.6 percent. Baghdad has claimed it has fully implemented its financial obligations to the KRG, including through loans to assist the Region in paying the salaries of its civil servants.
