In an interview with Channel8 on Wednesday, Jamal Kochar, a member of the Finance Committee of the Iraqi Parliament, said that Baghdad is not likely to tolerate a decrease in the amount of non-oil earnings sent to the federal treasury from the Kurdistan Region.

Kochar stressed that Iraq’s fiscal space remains highly constrained under the current three-year federal budget. In 2023 alone, Baghdad recorded a deficit of 64 trillion dinars, forcing the government to suspend nearly 6,000 projects and leaving both contractors and provincial administrations without payments.

He underlined that the federal government is not supposed to make concessions on non-oil revenue obligations in these conditions.