ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) decided on Monday to pay the salaries of civil servants from the "limited financial resources" available following a delegation visit to Baghdad.
The decision to pay the public employees came following a meeting between Prime Minister Masrour Barzani and members of a high-level KRG delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani, who recently visited Baghdad to resolve oil disputes and Baghdad's latest decision to withhold the KRG budget share.
"In part of the meeting, the government decided to start paying the salaries of civil servants from the available limited financial sources," read an official statement published Saturday evening.
"The KRG emphasized the need for continued talks with Baghdad in the direction of the protection of the Kurdistan Region's constitutional financial entitlements. It was decided for the delegation to return to Baghdad this week to continue the talks," it added.
Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi’s office called on the finance ministry in mid-April to halt budget transfers to the KRG and take back all transfers made since January 1, 2019.
Baghdad accuses the KRG of failing to send even a single barrel of oil in exchange for its share of the federal budget – an arrangement agreed in December.
Eager to keep public sector workers on the payroll, the KRG delegation arrived in Baghdad late Tuesday to hash things out.
The KRG will also take steps to collect debts owed from private companies, according to the statement, which also addressed calls for devolution from officials in Sulaimani.
The KRG categorically stands in the way of any threat posed to "the territorial entity of the Kurdistan Region or any attempt for two-administrations," it said.
The idea of decentralization of administrative and financial powers has recently floated in the Kurdistan Region, notably in the Sulaimani province in a bid to help weather the existing financial crunch.
Sulaimani Provincial Council formed a committee on Thursday to begin the process of devolving financial and administrative powers from the central government in Erbil.
The KRG's warning against the any attempt in the direction of the split of the Kurdistan Region into two administrations comes as a result of a potentially explosive standoff between rival Peshmerga units affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)- dominant in Erbil- and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), dominant in Sulaimani.
The two parties and their affiliated security forces dominate their own respective spheres of geographical and economic influence inside the Kurdistan Region – a remnant of the brutal civil war of the 1990s. They have since worked together to govern the autonomous Region.
