Kurdish Lawmaker Warns 2027 Budget Violates Kurdistan Region Financial Rights
At a Glance
- MP Ramyar Haider warned that Iraq's draft 2027 budget reduces Kurdistan's effective share to 6.1 percent.
- Haider cautioned that the current draft budget fails to guarantee future salaries for Kurdish public employees.
- The lawmaker urged Kurdish leaders to project a unified stance and mount an immediate constitutional challenge.
- Haider emphasized that parliamentarians lack the legal authority to increase the budget once finalized by ministers.
Ramyar Haider, a Kurdish lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament, warned that Iraq's draft 2027 budget reduces the Kurdistan Region's effective share to 6.1 percent, which jeopardizes public salaries, and urged Kurdish leaders to unite immediately for a constitutional challenge while the bill is still being drafted.
Key statements and Focus Area
- Concerning the current draft budget, MP Ramyar Haider told Channel8 that “everyone has felt the violation of the rights of the citizens and the government of the Kurdistan Region.”
- Haider stressed that while the budget is still in the drafting stage, the Kurdish political leadership must project a unified stance “to wage a legal and constitutional battle with Iraqi political leaders.”
- “It is even highly likely that in the coming year, the government will not be able to pay the salaries of public servants, let alone fund projects and services,” he cautioned.
Speaking in an interview with Channel8 regarding the upcoming Iraqi budget for next year and the share of the Kurdistan Region, lawmaker Ramyar Haider confirmed the draft budget for the year 2027 is currently under discussion within the Council of Ministers.
He emphasized that as Iraqi political leaders continue discussions to finalize the text and submit it to the Council of Representatives as a draft law, there is growing anxiety among Kurdistan's citizens regarding potential fiscal restrictions and the denial of the Kurdistan Region's constitutional rights through the budget.
“The distribution of the budget among provinces must be based on geographical distribution and population ratios,” he emphasized, adding that the population ratio of the Kurdistan Region is 14.4%.
Haider clarified that while the Kurdistan Region’s fixed share is set at a low 12.67 percent, additional deductions for other budget items mean the Region's actual allocation drops to just 6.1 percent of the total general budget.
“This creates a major problem for the Kurdistan Region and its citizens,” he remarked.
The MP highlighted that because Kurdish parties lack a parliamentary majority and lawmakers lack the constitutional authority to increase the budget, the KRG and political leaders must unite immediately while the bill is still a draft to secure citizens' financial rights.
Haider also underscored that Kurdish political leaders "hold leverage and can make changes" to the budget issue.
He said that historically, political unity allowed Kurds to govern Iraq, emphasizing that no national project or program was ever possible without their participation.
The lawmaker further affirmed that during a meeting he personally attended with the Iraqi Prime Minister, Ali Faleh al-Zaidi, the latter emphasized that any adverse or unstable situation affecting the Kurdistan Region would inevitably impact Iraq as a whole.
FYI
However, the Iraqi Council of Ministers officially voted last week to send the draft legislation back to the Ministry of Finance for extensive fiscal and structural revisions
The total proposed 2027 federal budget is set at 217 trillion Iraqi dinars, or approximately 144.7 billion US dollars.
Channel8 has reported earlier that the proposed draft of the federal budget faces intense scrutiny as a massive 113 trillion dinars is carved out exclusively for sovereign expenditures like defense and debt repayment.
Because the Kurdistan Region's 12.70% allocation is only applied to the remaining 104 trillion dinar pool after these deductions, the KRG's final net share drops to approximately 13 trillion dinars, or an effective rate of just 6.1% of the total national budget.
Compounding this severe financial strain, the draft's controversial Article 10 retroactively registers a 9 trillion dinar past debt against Erbil, threatening future regional payrolls alongside Baghdad's continuous clawbacks of 120 billion dinars in local non-oil revenues.
To address these compounding fiscal pressures, a senior KRG delegation is scheduled to return to Baghdad this week to restart technical negotiations with the federal Ministry of Finance, which was ordered by the Iraqi Cabinet to amend the bill to fund new ministries.
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