ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Iraq’s 2027 draft budget law is set to be submitted to the parliament in mid-November, a lawmaker said on Monday, after the cabinet returned the draft to the finance ministry in October for a review, delaying its submission to the legislature.

“The submission of the draft budget law to the Council of Representatives [Iraqi parliament] has been postponed until November 15,” Uday Awad, the head of the parliament’s finance commitee, told Iraqi state media.

The Iraqi Council of Ministers reportedly returned the draft budget to the finance ministry for revisions in mid-October, delaying its submission to parliament. The proposed bill had been contested and faced heavy criticism from Kurdish authorities in particular.

A major point of contention in the proposed budget has been the Kurdistan Region’s share. The Iraqi parliament’s second deputy speaker Farhad Atrushi, a Kurd, in October warned that Baghdad’s draft budget contained “bad things for the Kurdistan Region.”

A high-level delegation from the Iraqi government met with Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Sunday in Zakho to discuss the budget issue, among several other outstanding Erbil-Baghdad disputes. Barzani told reporters following the meeting that “we have not reached a final result but we hope that the results make both sides happy,” adding that “negotiations continue.”

The Kurdistan Region has maintained that its share of the federal budget must reflect its actual population, which is 14.14 percent of Iraq’s total, according to the latest census. In mid-September, the premier called anything less than that “unfair”.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has issued a directive to grand permanent employment status to more than 500,000 contract and temporary government employees under the 2027 budget, government spokesperson Haidar al-Aboudi said Saturday. He also instructed the creation of 120,000 other contract positions to be distributed according to population ratios.

Awad said that the finance committee “supports” the directive to grant contract-based workers permanent employment, noting that “we are working with the government to secure their status.”