Today, Thursday, Kurdistan Regional Government Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani made public the non-oil financial revenues of Kurdistan region's Halabja and Sulaimani provinces as Erbil continues to withhold their funds since October.


"Today, I announce an important project which is Shafafiat [transparency], transparency in non-petroleum returns, to make public all non-oil revenues of Sulaimani and Halabja provinces; the project is an effort by my team and me and the KRG ministry of finance," Talabani said.

 

The DPM noted that we closely monitor and record all cash going to the public coffers in Sulaimani and Halabja governorates.


The initiative helps to bust all the rumors about public revenues in Sulaimani disappearing and that Sulaimani Banks are robbed, Talabani, explained. The website also lays to rest the widely popular ideas that traffic from Sulaimani and Halabja border crossing disappears before reaching public coffers.


The financial revenues are all available on shafafiat.com in Kurdish. Shafafiat means transparency as the website displays revenues from the two governorates' different treasuries, updated daily. The website also lists the taxes and tariffs collected in the two provinces.


According to the website, today's total revenues of Sulaimani and Halabja added up to $1,769,248 US, roughly $50 ml US adjusted for fluctuations in daily revenues. Though the revenues would only cover a fraction of the Sulaimani and Halabja total spending, that is around $300 ml US, according to unofficial figures.


"You learn it as well" was a promotion of the disclosure in advertisements that ran on billboards throughout Sulaimani and Halabja. You Know It As Well is the slogan of the initiative, making Sulaimani and Halabja revenues transparent as the first province in the Kurdistan region and Iraq.


For long, Erbil has argued that Sulaimani should fund Sulaimani, as PUK President Talabani said in an interview with the Iraq Oil Report. Erbil is bound by law to distribute revenue from the Kurdistan region coffers equally; however, for the past two months, Erbil has withheld most funds from Sulaimani, and hospitals, among other public institutions, find it difficult to acquire medicine.