Iraqi Kurdistan: KRG struggling to pay salaries

The budgetary dispute between Baghdad and Erbil has strained Kurdish finances to the point where civil servants’ salaries have not been paid. “Salaries were two months behind, but people finally got paid in mid-March,” a senior civil servant told GSN. “Now we’re only one month behind.” More than a fifth of Kurdistan’s population is on the government payroll, which has swollen to $722m a month, or 70% of public spending in 2013, according to Reuters. But rather than angering employees, the lack of payment has “only made us all more united against Baghdad”, the civil servant said.