AFP, Baghdad :
A referendum on independence for Iraqi Kurdistan set for September 25 comes as the autonomous region faces the worst economic crisis in its short history.
Plunging government income, the challenge of fighting the Islamic State group and the cost of hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees have combined to punch a gaping hole in the Kurdistan Regional Government’s budget.
“The KRG’s coffers are empty and it’s burdened with debts,” Ruba Husari, an expert on Iraq’s oil industry, told AFP.
The World Bank said in a recent report that the fiscal crisis and the security challenge posed by IS “have had a significant adverse impact on economic growth”.
The region has benefitted from an influx of investment since the 2003 fall of dictator Saddam Hussein in a US-led invasion.
It won a measure of autonomy in the 2005 Iraqi constitution and has been seen as an island of stability in a country plunged into anarchy.
The drowsy regional capital Arbil was transformed as investors built towers, plush buildings, shopping malls and hotels to host foreign executives on business trips.
All that collapsed in 2014 as the price of oil plunged, IS jihadists seized a tranche of northern Iraq abutting the KRG and more than a million displaced Iraqis and Syrian refugees fled to the autonomous region.
A referendum on independence for Iraqi Kurdistan set for September 25 comes as the autonomous region faces the worst economic crisis in its short history.
Plunging government income, the challenge of fighting the Islamic State group and the cost of hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees have combined to punch a gaping hole in the Kurdistan Regional Government’s budget.
“The KRG’s coffers are empty and it’s burdened with debts,” Ruba Husari, an expert on Iraq’s oil industry, told AFP.
The World Bank said in a recent report that the fiscal crisis and the security challenge posed by IS “have had a significant adverse impact on economic growth”.
The region has benefitted from an influx of investment since the 2003 fall of dictator Saddam Hussein in a US-led invasion.
It won a measure of autonomy in the 2005 Iraqi constitution and has been seen as an island of stability in a country plunged into anarchy.
The drowsy regional capital Arbil was transformed as investors built towers, plush buildings, shopping malls and hotels to host foreign executives on business trips.
All that collapsed in 2014 as the price of oil plunged, IS jihadists seized a tranche of northern Iraq abutting the KRG and more than a million displaced Iraqis and Syrian refugees fled to the autonomous region.
