Parallel dollar tops 156,000 per hundred as Baghdad and Erbil leave the salary file open

IraqiNews reported that on Wednesday 9 September the parallel-market rate rose above 156,000 dinars per $100 in all three main centres: 156,500 in Baghdad, described as a fresh intra-month high, 156,250 in Basra and 156,000 in Erbil, framed as a widening premium over the Central Bank peg. That is one publisher, one day’s pricing data, with no named dealer or exchange house, and this desk does not have the official CBI rate to set beside it. Reports circulating this week of a Kurdistan Democratic Party account of a high-level KRG delegation in Baghdad, said to cover oil, salaries and the budget through 2027, have reached us only through currency-speculation aggregator sites, which are not sourcing. We are not treating that visit as established.

The two governments are still arguing over the same ledger. KRG Ministry of Finance figures published in June state that Baghdad has transferred 42 per cent of the Region’s budget share over seven years — 33 trillion dinars, about $25.2bn, for salaries — while more than 48 trillion dinars, about $36.6bn, was withheld, with nothing at all for operational or investment spending. That is the KRG’s own accounting of a dispute in which it is a party. Baghdad’s position, also from June, is that the federal government paid salaries for five months of 2025 while the KRG delivered no non-oil revenues, and that further transfers absent a full settlement would expose officials to liability. The KRG finance ministry replies that it met its obligations under the Financial Administration Law and transferred the treasury’s share throughout 2025, while salaries were funded for only ten months.

The transit arrangement that underwrites part of this was extended only to March 2026, SOMO head Ali Nazar al-Shatri told Rudaw at the time, quoting an agreement among “the three sides — the federal government, the Kurdistan Regional Government, and the oil companies.” What governs Kurdish exports through Ceyhan now that the extension has lapsed is not established in the public record this desk can see. Meanwhile the external squeeze is documented: a House of Commons Library briefing dated 8 July 2026 records that Washington ended the sanctions waiver for Iraqi imports of Iranian electricity in April 2026, that the gas waiver survives with Iranian gas covering 40 per cent of Iraqi needs, and that the United States has halted some Iraqi oil export revenues because those proceeds are routed through US-controlled accounts.

Assessment: Distrust both ledgers equally: each side is publishing its own arithmetic about money it wants. What is not in dispute is the structure — Erbil’s salaries depend on a transit deal whose successor nobody has produced, and Baghdad’s revenues clear through accounts Washington can freeze. That is the same leverage described in the lead story, applied to the budget rather than to the militias, and it is why the PMF file and the salary file are the same negotiation conducted with different vocabulary. The parallel-market premium is the cheapest daily read on how Iraqis price that risk, but one publisher’s snapshot without the official rate is an indicator, not a trend.