Amr Qadir has a shop in the mountainous town of Soran, 70 kilometres northeast of Erbil. A lack of customers has nearly forced him to give up the career he has been pursuing for 22 years.
"I have never seen a worse situation," Qadir told Rudaw on Saturday. "It has affected us so much that I wish I could give up, because the lack of a market has drained us."
Markets across the Kurdistan Region are grappling with stagnation and reduced sales. A significant portion of the population, primarily government workers, are not being paid regularly.
"How can I do what I want? I have received one salary payment in six months," said Mohammed Ibrahim, a resident of Soran administration.
Another resident, Jamal Hamad, said, "The majority of individuals in this area depend on their [government] salaries as their primary source of income. In the absence of their salaries, they lack alternative sources of income to support their spending in the market."
Every day, the Soran market sees a surge in activity two hours before the evening prayer. But most of the people are window shoppers with limited financial resources and rarely spend more than 5,000 Iraqi dinars.
The Kurdish government has failed to pay its civil servants on time and in full for nearly a decade due to a financial crisis. Economic woes in the Kurdistan Region have worsened in the past year after Turkey suspended the flow of Kurdish crude oil through its pipeline following a ruling from a Paris arbitration court. As a result, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has lost billions of dollars in revenue and has had to turn to the federal government for funds to cover its payroll.
But payments from Baghdad have not been made regularly and are not enough, according to the KRG. The federal and regional governments are working to establish a system of regular, direct payments to public sector workers, as directed by a federal court ruling.