Companies are reportedly relocating from the Kurdistan Region to rest of Iraq in an effort to avoid taxes and customs duties which the Iraqi government charges on goods exported to southern Iraq.
According to Kurdish media network Rudaw, the Baghdad government considers goods produced in Iraqi Kurdistan to be foreign, and subject to import duties.
Mustafah Zubeir, of the KRG Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Directorate General of Industrial Development, is quoted as saying that about 100 factories have left Kurdistan for Baghdad to avoid this issue.
