ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Kurdish Ministry for Religious Affairs announced on Saturday that it has collected more than $5 million in revenues from Kurdistan’s pilgrims to Islam’s holy city of Mecca in 2016, marking the first time the government has introduced Umrah fees as a way to increase the region’s income from non-oil sectors.
Mariwan Naqshbani, head the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, told Rudaw that Kurdistan can collect additional revenues if the government were to extend the travel fees to people taking non-religious journeys — currently only Muslims who visit the Saudi city pay the fees.
“In 2016, the revenue for Hajj and Umrah was more than $5 million,” Naqshbandi said. “We collected more than $4 million from the people, who need to pay 50,000 IQD [about $38 USD] to fill in the application form. And we collected about $1 million from Umrah fees. With this, we had more than $5 million in revenue from these two elements, and have provided the revenues to the government.”
Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, regarded as the most holy place in Islam, is a mandatory religious duty for every Muslim who is physically and financially capable of the journey during the last month of the Islamic calendar at least once in their lifetime.
The pilgrims, however, can visit the holy site of Mecca at any time of the year, which is then seen as Umrah, not a mandatory duty, but only as respecting commandments.
Currently, people who go on Hajj have to pay $100. For the first time though, the Kurdish government introduced the Umrah fee, to increase the government’s revenue, in particular from the non-oil sector, following the sharp decline in oil prices some two years ago.
The Kurdish government has also introduced or increased new fees and customs in public services.
Last year 85,000 people from Kurdistan applied to the ministry to take the religious journey, far more than Kurdistan’s share. As of February 2016, only 2,000 people visited Saudi Arabia, the official figures show.
In 2016, the ministry estimated that the Kurdish pilgrims to Mecca would spend around $20 million there in 2016, as over 10,000 people from the region were expected to make the pilgrimage.
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