ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani arrived in Baghdad on Monday, leading a high-level Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) delegation for talks with Iraqi officials over the Region’s budget share in Iraq’s 2027 federal budget, the KRG said.
KRG said Monday that Barzani would meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi and several other political leaders.
“The main focus of the talks is securing the constitutional rights, financial entitlements, and the Kurdistan Region's share in the 2027 federal budget,” the statement said.
The visit comes a day after a separate senior KRG delegation arrived in Baghdad to resume negotiations with federal officials over the Region’s financial entitlements in the draft 2027 budget bill.
Danar Abdulghaffar, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) parliamentary bloc, told Rudaw’s Nahro Mohammed on Monday that the delegation had presented the Region’s demands to the Iraqi Ministerial Council for Economy on Sunday.
The demands were submitted to Mohammed Tamim, deputy prime minister and head of the council, who is expected to relay them to Zaidi, Abdulghaffar said.
The KRG’s Department of Media and Information said the delegation would meet with relevant federal authorities to “present its comments on the draft bill's provisions and seek to secure the constitutional rights” of the people of Kurdistan and the financial entitlements of public sector employees.
The negotiations come ahead of an Iraqi Council of Ministers meeting scheduled for Tuesday. However, a source in Baghdad told Rudaw’s Hiwa Jamal that the regular cabinet meeting would proceed without discussing the 2027 federal budget bill, with deliberations on the draft postponed to a later date.
The source said at least seven ministers are currently outside the country, prompting the postponement. Budget discussions could instead be rescheduled for Saturday.
KRG contributed $42.8 billion to sovereign spending
As the budget negotiations pick up pace, the KRG on Monday highlighted what it described as longstanding financial discrepancies between Erbil and Baghdad, arguing that the Region has contributed substantially to Iraq's sovereign expenditures while receiving no funding from that allocation.
In a statement citing an analytical and statistical report published on Saturday by the KRG's Department of Media and Information in coordination with the Ministry of Finance and Economy, the government said that despite the Kurdistan Region contributing more than 65 trillion Iraqi dinars (over $42.8 billion) to sovereign expenditures between 2014 and 2025 to the federal budget, it received no funds under sovereign spending during that period.
According to the report, Iraq's total federal budget over the 12-year period amounted to 1 quadrillion and 767 trillion dinars. The Kurdistan Region's overall share before deductions for sovereign expenditures exceeded 245 trillion dinars, while its net legal entitlement after those deductions stood at 146 trillion dinars.
However, Baghdad disbursed only 41 trillion dinars to the Region over the entire period, equivalent to 2.04 percent of Iraq's total budget, the report said.
The KRG maintained that the Region's statutory share was set at 17 percent between 2014 and 2017 before being reduced to 12.67 percent from 2018 onward, which it described as a unilateral reduction without a legal basis.
The report also linked the funding shortfall directly to the Region's public-sector payroll, saying federal transfers over the 144-month period were sufficient to cover only 46 months of salaries, leaving the equivalent of eight years' wages unfunded by Baghdad.
It said that, since 2015, the federal government had tied the Region's budget allocations to the condition of actual expenditure, without the KRG's consent, effectively restricting disbursements to salary payments of civil servants.
Actual expenditure refers to the money the federal government actually spends, rather than the amounts approved in the budget. The KRG argues that Baghdad has used this mechanism to condition the Region’s budget allocations on actual spending.
The KRG said the shortfall had compelled it to resort to direct oil exports to sustain the livelihoods of its citizens. Baghdad for years opposed KRG’s independent oil sales, cutting the region’s share over the sales that it had maintained were “illegal.”
Dispute over oil and the 2027 budget
The draft 2027 federal budget allocates the Kurdistan Region 12.7 percent of federal funds, subject to several conditions, including the transfer of oil and non-oil revenues to Baghdad.
Erbil is seeking to raise its allocation to 14.14 percent, citing the results of Iraq's 2024 population census.
Another major sticking point is the volume of oil the Region must deliver to the federal government. Baghdad is seeking at least 400,000 barrels per day starting in 2027, while Erbil has proposed handing over between 250,000 and 280,000 barrels daily.
The draft bill also outlines a mechanism to settle accumulated financial obligations between Erbil and Baghdad, estimated at 12.7 trillion Iraqi dinars ($8.4 billion) for the 2004–2026 period, over three years. It also addresses the Region's outstanding debts to the Trade Bank of Iraq (TBI).
Despite a 2025 agreement between the two governments to market Kurdistan Region oil through Iraq's State Oil Marketing Company (SOMO), disagreements over production volumes, payments to oil companies and revenue-sharing arrangements have continued to obstruct a lasting settlement.
Last updated at 1:45 pm.
