Salih called the move a negative precedent in political work and that the law for providing salaries for public servants in the country cannot be complete without a solution to the salaries of their peers from the Kurdistan Region, NRT reported.
Salih said in a statement that civil servants in the Kurdistan Region are Iraqi citizens and have their rights stipulated in the Constitution.
Earlier on Thursday, the Council of Representatives approved the draft Fiscal Deficit Financing Law to fill deficits through borrowing 12 trillion Iraqi dinars (some $10 billion) in internal and external loans to finance the salary payments to public servants and other expenditures for the last three months in 2020.
The Sunni and Shia caucuses passed the law without consent from the Kurdish caucuses, after the Kurdish caucuses walked out of the floor debate in protest of the Kurdistan Region's share from the loans.
According to the legislation, the KRG should commit to hand over an amount of barrels of oil per day (bpd) to the federal government that will be determined by the State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO) in order to receive 320 billion Iraqi dinars to pay its civil servants.
“Unfortunately, the law was passed in the absence of national consensus, specifically from the Kurdish component, which constitutes a negative precedent in political action,” Salih said.
He stressed that citizens and public servants “will not be held responsible for the consequences of the political conflicts that have brought us to where we are today,”
“The President called for the necessity of resolving all problems related to the Kurdistan Region in accordance with the constitution and with transparency,” the statement read.
“The passage of the fiscal deficit financing law was necessary to secure the employees’ salaries for the next three months, although borrowing is not a sustainable solution,” Salih said.
He emphasized that the “borrowing law alone is not sufficient in facing this crisis, and a comprehensive reform policy in root solution and protection of employees' salaries must be adopted as a priority that does not bear leniency,” he added.
On Thursday, the Kurdistan Region Presidency said that a meeting will be held between the three presidencies of the Kurdistan Region, relevant parties, and the Kurdistan Region’s representatives in the federal government and Council of Representatives regarding the legislation passed by the federal legislature.
In April, Baghdad cut off all budget transfers to Erbil after the latter failed to send any oil to the federal government, as it was required to under the 2019 federal budget law.
The two sides reached a temporary agreement in early August where Baghdad would send 320 billion Iraqi dinars, in return for bringing customs procedures at the Region’s international border crossings under federal control.
Reporter's code: 50101