Comparing the proposed 2021 budget with the leaked preliminary draft from last week offers insights into the political bargaining process. Short answer is it's mostly about maximising share of patronage.

Key areas that stand out: salaries for KRG, Hashd, Interior and Defence

Spending on KRG salaries went up by 1 trillion IQD (19% increase) despite the fact that the number of KRG employees remained the same. KRG's overall share up by 11%. Worth noting that Erbil announced yesterday it would abide by revenue sharing deal if budget passed

Spending on Hashd salaries up by a whopping 54%. We don't know how many personnel have been budgeted for 2021, nor indeed how many are currently on the payroll.

Interior ministry salaries inexplicably went up by 43% despite only a further 3,000 jobs added. Total number of newly budgeted personnel from 2019-21 increased by 95,000.

Defence ministry salaries up by 59% despite no additional increase in personnel. Makes absolutely no sense to me. Total number of newly budgeted personnel from 2019-21 up by 142,000.

I should add that total expenditure went from IQD 150tr to IQD 164tr during the final round of negotiations. Again, totally inexplicable from a public financing perspective since projected revenues only went up slightly by 1.5tr. That means the deficit went from 58tr to 71tr

The proposed 2021 budget projects share of non-oil revenues at 21.5% of total govt revenue. In the 2019 budget that figure was 11.5%. Whether the govt can actualise these projections is another matter. The 2019 budget projected IQD 12tr in non-oil revenues but got under IQD 9tr