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KRG Minister: Our Problem With Baghdad Lies in the Budget

The Kurdistan Regional Government’s reconstruction minister talks about the ministry’s plans to revitalize the housing sector and notes that the region’s problems with Baghdad center on budget allocations, writes Abdel Hamid Zebari.
A man works at a construction site in Iraq's northern province of Arbil September 25, 2010. While most Iraqis struggle under the detritus of a seven-year war, the people of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan can frolic in a public pool, ride an elevated cable car over freshly planted parkland or escape stifling heat in a new ice skating hall. The new luxuries of Iraq's northern Kurdish region seem a world apart from the dust and grit of Baghdad, where suicide bombers are an everyday fear, dirt-gray blast walls domina
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Minister of Housing and Reconstruction in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Kamaran Ahmed, complains that the central government has shown a lack of earnestness when it comes to disbursing the KRG’s budget share. This share amounts to 17% of the total general budget and will be used to move forward with the reconstruction projects.

Ahmed believes that the region has accomplished a great deal of reconstruction with little money, stressing that security and stability have positively impacted urban development in the three major Kurdish cities of Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Dohuk. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Ahmed affirmed that his ministry has succeeded in accomplishing 70% of the reconstruction plan. Below is the text of the interview:

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