More than 57 projects in Sulaimani and multiple others in Erbil are to restart following a decision by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Council of Ministers.
Cash-starved ministries can now keep 20 percent of their income to reinvest in long-neglected infrastructure projects, including health services, water facilities, the electricity grid, the road network, and agriculture.
There are also plans for the KRG’s supreme gas and oil committee to allocate sums to the Region’s provinces.
Erbil governor Nawzad Hadi said more than 2,000 projects had been halted with the onset of the budget crisis in 2014 and the financial crisis of 2016.
“With the start of 2014, the projects of the government were very broad. For example, many of our hospitals stalled,” Hadi told Rudaw.
Improving financial conditions mean Erbil’s new 120 meter ring road will be complete by the end of the year, he said.
Erbil also has “verbal approval” to complete the Pirmam tunnel with a cash boost of $4-5 million. The project, which has an overall budget of $146 million, has dragged on for seven years.
Blighted by frequent power blackouts, Erbil will also benefit from new funding for stalled electricity projects, he added.
It was good news for Sulaimani too, as rafts of stalled projects were allocated a share of the funding long denied them.
Around 1,200 projects ground to a halt when the crisis hit, said Haval Abubakr, the provincial governor.
“We were told on the day of Arafah [August 20] that work on 57 strategic, important service projects will be restarted,” Abubakr said.
The High Committee of Oil and Gas has allocated $50 million to pay contractors, Abubakr said. A further $10 million may also be found to complete several stalled projects.
“We hope gradually, as we move out of the difficult economic conditions, work on the projects will be resumed again,” the governor said.
Although the money is far from sufficient to resume all of the projects, “this is an important part, an important start,” he added.
The Kurdistan Region’s economy has slowly improved in recent months thanks to a gradual improvement in relations between Erbil and Baghdad.
A dispute over independent oil sales in 2014 saw the government of Nouri al-Maliki cut the Region’s share of the Iraqi federal budget to zero. This was followed by a crippling financial crisis in 2016, forcing the KRG to impose austerity measures. Many civil servants went unpaid for years.
This was shadowed by a costly war against ISIS. The final blow came in October 2017 when the federal government took over the Kirkuk oilfields – halving the KRG’s oil income overnight.
Baghdad has technically restored the KRG’s share of the federal budget, although it has been cut from 17 percent to just 12.5.
