ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Iraq’s draft of the 2027 budget has “bad things for the Kurdistan Region,” Farhad Atrushi, second deputy speaker of the Iraqi parliament, told The New Region Wednesday, a day after meeting with Finance Minister Falih al-Sari, whom he accused of trying to hide the draft.

During the meeting on Tuesday, which focused on the budget, Atrushi said: “To be frank, this friend [the minister] tried to hide it, saying ‘no one has it, not even the minister.’ But I had received a copy, it had very bad things for the Kurdistan Region.”

Erbil has insisted that its share of the budget be based on its population size, put at 14.14 percent. In mid-September Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said anything less than that would be considered “unfair”.

According to unconfirmed reports, Baghdad has allocated the usual 12.67 percent in the current draft.

Atrushi added that there are many “strange” points in the draft relating to the Kurdistan Region, especially in terms of “punitive” measures he claimed Baghdad could impose on Erbil should the latter not accept its demands.

“There is room to make changes, and they [Baghdad] have good intentions, we can’t say that their intentions are bad. But it requires much negotiation,” Atrushi stressed, adding: “Especially Article 10 is all about the Kurdistan Region, and it has some bad details.”

Last week, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) also accused Baghdad of not counting 500,000 displaced people in the Region, while also cutting disputed areas out of the census.

“We will do whatever we can to make sure this budget does not get passed as it is,” Atrushi said.

Ahead of the meeting, Atrushi had also directed a parliamentary question to Sari regarding the delayed disbursement of the Kurdistan Region’s civil servant salaries.

“I want them to understand that if we are all Iraqi, a civil servant in Erbil, Duhok, or Sulaimani is equal to those in Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul, let them prove it practically,” Atrushi said, adding that Sari had promised to solve the issue.

The lack of provision of funds for public sector workers in the Kurdistan Region has also been a recurring issue, with the Iraqi government suspending salaries in May based on the claimed that Erbil had used up its share of the annual budget.

On Tuesday, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Finance Minister Awat Sheikh Janab told The New Region that the 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 allocation.