ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - A high-level Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) delegation is set to head to Baghdad on Tuesday to discuss the 2027 budget with the federal government the next day, officials said.

Jamal Kocher, a member of the Iraqi parliament's finance committee, told The New Region that Erbil’s share of the upcoming budget is still being negotiated.

A member of the KRG’s delegation said they have submitted their demands to Baghdad’s finance ministry and Council of Ministers, but some have not been included in the draft budget law.

The draft allocates the usual 12.67 percent to Erbil, The New Region has learned, while Kurdistan Region officials argue that the figure should be raised to 14.14 percent based on census data.

Last week, the KRG accused Baghdad of lowering the Region’s population percentage in the census by not counting 500,000 displaced people in the Kurdistan Region and cutting disputed territories from the census. It demanded that its 14.14 percent population share be used to determine its allocation in Iraq’s 2027 federal budget.

In mid-September, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said anything below 14.14 percent would be considered “unfair”.

Also last week, Finance Minister Awat Sheikh Janab told The New Region that the Kurdistan Region has not received even seven percent of Iraq’s annual budget in a single year since 2014, despite consistently being allocated 12.67 percent of the total in the budget bills.

Erbil and Baghdad’s disagreements over oil exports and domestic revenue, and the Kurdistan Region’s share of the budget present another contentious issue ahead of the federal budget approval.

Iraq’s 2026 budget law has faced major delays, partly owing to the regional conflict and the ensuing financial turmoil due to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has significantly affected Iraq’s ability to balance and set the budget and pay public sector salaries.