The Iraqi parliament has postponed a vote on the country's 2013 budget, running at $117.5 billion, as lawmakers differ on whether Baghdad should allocate money for companies working in the country's Kurdistan region in the north, lawmakers said Tuesday.
The Iraqi parliament has postponed a vote on the country's 2013 budget,
running at $117.5 billion, as lawmakers differ on whether
Baghdad
should allocate money for companies working in the country's
Kurdistan
region in the north, lawmakers said Tuesday.
The Kurds have suspended crude oil exports via the Baghdad-controlled export
pipeline since December last year, protesting delays in payment to producing
companies in the region. Even in November, the Kurds didn't reach the level of
250,000 barrels a day in exports as agreed upon with
Baghdad
.
"There is no agreement and the vote on the budget has been postponed to an
indefinite time," Mahmoud Othman, a leading parliamentarian from the
Kurdistan
alliance in the federal parliament, told Dow Jones Newswires. The main reason
is that the budget hasn't allocated enough money for paying companies exploring
for oil and gas in
Kurdistan
, Mr. Othman added.
The Kurds want the budget to include some 4.2 trillion Iraqi dinars ($3.5
billion) as payments due to oil companies working in the Kurdish region. The
Kurds said that this amount would cover retroactive payments from 2010 up to
2013.
Meanwhile the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's bloc in the parliament,
the State of the Law, is arguing that the Kurds should first pay for the
250,000 barrels a day they have failed to export from November up to now, said
Ibrahim al-Mutlaq, a member of the parliament's finance committee.
The central government in
Baghdad
has
made one payment to companies, but Iraqi officials said last year that they
wouldn't pay oil firms a second portion because the Kurdistan Regional
Government has failed to reach agreed production under an agreement reached in
September.
The KRG further annoyed
Baghdad
when
it started unilateral exports of more than 15,000 barrels a day of oil and
condensate via trucks to
Turkey
at
the beggining of January and pledged to increase them gradually. The Kurds also
plan to set up their own export pipeline away from the Baghdad-controlled one.
Baghdad
paid some IQD650 billion last
year to companies but decided to suspend payment of another portion of IQD350
billion because the Kurds suspended exports.
Mr. Othman also said there is disagreement over what percentage of the budget
should be allocated to
Kurdistan
spending. Over the last few years, the national budget has allocated some 17%
of spending to
Kurdistan
assuming that the population
in the region makes up some 17% of
Iraq
's
total population.
"Many lawmakers argue that some 17% of budget to
Kurdistan
is
too much and should be made less," Mr. Othman said, adding that the Kurds
would accept a fresh population census to determine the percentage but not now
as it would delay the budget further.
The KRG and
Baghdad
are
locked on dispute over who should control oil in the
Kurdistan
region.
Baghdad
considers scores of oil deals signed with companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM),
Total SA (TOT), Gazprom Neft (GZPFY), DNO International ASA (DNO.OS) and Genel
Energy PLC (GENL.LN) as null and void because they haven't been approved by the
central government, while the Kurds argue that they are legal according to the
new constitution.
Also there is disagreement over the defense ministry budget, said Mr.
al-Mutlaq, a member of the Al-Iraqiya bloc led by former prime minister Ayad
Allawi, an opponent of Mr. Maliki.
"The Al-Iraqiya bloc has also asked to deduct some IQD2 trillion from the
defense ministry budget and transfer it to families who were affected by recent
floods along the river
Tigris
,"
Mr. Ibrahim said. "We think that the defense budget is too much," he
added.
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