BAGHAD, Iraq - Iraq's parliament on Saturday assigned several committees to address the lingering economic crisis in the Kurdistan Region and find ways to "ease the financial pressure" on state employees in the Region, Kurdish lawmaker Zana Rostayi told Rudaw.

Rostayi said that according to the constitution the parliament passes annual budgets that are designed for all Iraq's provinces, in which Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is included.

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"The Kurdistan Region is still part of Iraq, which is why we think the Iraqi state is responsible to ensure KRG budget and the wages to its employees in the Region," Rostayi said.The KRG has been struggling to pay its estimated 1.3 million employees since February 2014, when relations between Erbil and Baghdad deteriorated over oil revenues.Iraq's government froze the Kurdish share of national budget in February 2014, due to Kurdistan Region's signing oil deals with foreign firms largely independent from Baghdad.Erbil was confident it would manage to finance its expenses with the sale of its oil directly to Turkey, but the dramatic decline in global oil prices and the war with the Islamic State (ISIS) abruptly derailed KRG's ability to offset its budget deficit."The Iraqi government is accountable for the financial crisis in the Region. State employees in Iraq and Kurdistan Region should be treated equally, something which clearly Baghdad has failed to do," Rostayi said.The KRG has set in motion a comprehensive austerity measure coupled with robust economic reforms sponsored by the World Bank in a bid to stabilize the economy.Government employees have seen their salaries cut by nearly 50 percent with high income wages reduced by almost 75 percent.The KRG has also suspended nearly all investment projects in the country, which had a double-digit growth until 2013."The KRG is confident that the economic conditions and people's incomes will stabilize," said Goran Mustafa, a Kurdish economist who has studied the austerity and reform packages."If the World Bank recommendations and other reforms continue, it is realistic that the growth will resume and people's earnings will increase to the high levels of 2009-2012," Mustafa said.Mustafa also said the KRG had "forcefully" reduced its own expenses and will continue to "interfere less" in the private economy."There will be considerably fewer employees on the KRG payroll within two years as the private sector will become a major source of livelihood in the Region," he said.Mustafa said the government will continue to finance those institutions that are engaged in protecting "the most vulnerable layers of the Kurdish society" that fall under poverty lines.More than one in ten in Kurdistan Region lives below poverty line despite robust economic reforms as overt unemployment rises to unprecedented levels since 2010, data from the Region's Statistics Office show.