Rashid, a Kurdistan Justice Group (KJG) lawmaker, told a local media outlet that the government will face questions from lawmakers if it makes a decision that goes against a law approved by Parliament.

He said that “it is impossible” that Baghdad will send any amount of money to the Kurdistan Region, unless it finds an alternative legal basis.

He added that Baghdad can make a one-time payment of 200 billion Iraqi dinars ($138 million) to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to settle debts, but this is not agreed to yet, NRT reported.

Under the 2021 Federal Budget Law, the KRG is supposed to send a portion of the customs income and the cash equivalent of 250,000 barrels of crude oil per day to Baghdad. The amount will be deducted from the budget transfers sent to the KRG from the federal government based on the price per barrel of oil sold by Iraq’s marketer SOMO.

Currently, the terms of the oil contracts negotiated by the KRG result in only a small portion of the income from export sales returning to the government because of fees to oil and pipeline companies.

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