151 votes for proposal over distribution of federal budget’s funds on provinces collected

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) MP Abdul Salam al-Maliki of the State of Law Coalition revealed collecting votes of MPs to set one criterion in distributing the financial allocations of the federal budget on the Iraqi provinces.

MP Maliki stated to Iraqi News “151 signatures were collected from MPs to submit a law draft about distributing the financial shares of the federal budget on the provinces,” noting that “the distribution of those funds should be according to the population density and poverty in the provinces.”

“There are provinces suffer from poverty but they are not awarded enough financial allocations to suit their needs such as Basra province which its oil exports make up large percentage of Iraq’s revenues,” he added.

It is worth mentioning that some MPs within the SLC have demanded to decrease the share of KR from the federal budget while the Kurds described these calls as included within the political outbidding and disputes between the Central Government and Kurdistan Region.

For his part, MP Hamid Bafi of the Kurdistani Democratic Party has stressed that the share of Kurdistan Region within the federal budget should not be less than 23%.