“The KRG Ministry of Finance and Economy is pleased to announce that more than 900,000 public sector beneficiaries have now been registered for the KRG’s financial inclusion program, MyAccount,” the project team said in a statement.
“This marks a major step in the KRG’s goal to bank over one million people through banks licensed and approved by the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI),” it added.
The bulk of the initiative’s beneficiaries are in Erbil province, with over 400,000 civil servants registered. Sulaimani comes in second place, and Duhok closely follows in third place.
“This month, more than 465,000 beneficiaries will receive their salaries electronically through all the partner banks. Citizens enjoy access to cash withdrawals from a growing network of bank branches and nearly 450 ATMs deployed across the Kurdistan Region,” the statement said.
The MyAccount project, announced in 2023 by Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, is part of a government initiative to digitize salaries and improve the salary disbursement process. It also enables public employees to receive payments directly through the banking system.
The project is the Kurdistan Region’s alternative to Baghdad’s Tawtin (localization) initiative, which also aims to pay public sector salaries through bank accounts instead of distributing cash.
In Sulaimani, many have preferred Tawtin over MyAccount, citing skepticism about the KRG’s ability to transfer federal funds received from Baghdad.
As part of the latest deal between Baghdad and Erbil over financial disputes, the salary domiciliation process in the Kurdistan Region must be completed “within three months.”
