Seven conditions for allocating the Kurdistan Region's share of Iraq's 2027 budget

According to KurdPress, economic expert Nabil Martouti put forward seven conditions on his personal page for the allocation of the Kurdistan Region's share of Iraq's 2027 budget.

According to Martouti's proposal, the first condition is the settlement of financial claims between the Iraqi federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government for the years 2004 to 2026, worth 12.775 trillion dinars, over three years.

He also considered it necessary for the Kurdistan Region to export at least 400,000 barrels of oil daily through the Iraqi Oil Marketing Company (SOMO) to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. According to this proposal, in the event of a halt or disruption in exports, the region must provide the said oil to the federal government’s Ministry of Petroleum for domestic consumption.

The third condition, which is customary, calls for the Kurdistan Region’s oil revenues to be transferred to the government’s general treasury and calls for a monthly audit of the data and information related to these revenues by the federal and Kurdistan Regional Government’s financial oversight courts.

The fourth condition concerns the delivery of gas in excess of the Kurdistan Region’s domestic needs to the federal government. According to this proposal, if the excess gas is not delivered, its value will be deducted from the region’s budget share. The economic expert, citing the ruling of the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court on February 15, 2022, stated that the fifth condition is a ban on the signing of investment or management contracts in the oil and gas sector with domestic and foreign companies by the Kurdistan Regional Government, except through the federal government's Ministry of Oil.

Reducing the Kurdistan Region's share of the budget to 12.7 percent instead of 14.14 percent is the sixth condition that is traditionally proposed.

In the seventh condition, he also emphasized that the Kurdistan Region's share should be determined based on actual costs, not estimated and approved costs, and that governance costs should also be deducted from the budget before calculating this share.