ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has granted its finance ministry authority to send 120 billion dinars to Baghdad every month in exchange for the Region's public salaries until a final settlement is reached, a top KRG official told The New Region.

After the resolution of a long-standing dispute between Erbil and Baghdad regarding the exports of the Region’s oil in late September, the two governments’ disagreements over the issue of sharing domestic revenues remain the main point of contention between the two sides, with a temporary settlement reached in the interim that would see Erbil send Baghdad 120 billion dinar as the federal treasury’s share of the Kurdistan Region’s domestic revenues until a final resolution is reached.

“In yesterday’s Council of Ministers’ meeting, the [KRG’s] Ministry of Finance and Economy was granted authority by a majority vote to collect 120 billion dinars from domestic revenues and transfer it to Baghdad, to prevent problems from arising regarding salaries,” the KRG’s Reconstruction Minister Dana Abdulkarim told The New Region on Thursday.

A long-standing dispute between Erbil and Baghdad over oil exports, in addition to the mechanism of sharing the KRG’s non-oil revenues, has propped up a budgetary conflict between the two sides, leading to years of sanctions on the KRG by the Iraqi government, the latest of which came in May, when Iraqi Finance Minister Taif Sami notified Erbil that the federal government will suspend funding the Region’s civil servant salaries.

Baghdad has yet to transfer the Kurdistan Region’s civil servants’ due payments for the months of August and September as of the time of writing this article. The KRG’s decision is an effort to ensure that the civil servants do not bear the brunt of the two governments’ differences until a common understanding is reached by both parties.

A source in the KRG’s finance ministry has confirmed to The New Region that efforts have begun to collect the necessary funds to transfer another 120 billion dinars to Baghdad, in hopes that August and September salaries will be disbursed before the Iraqi parliamentary elections, scheduled for November 11.