On Sunday, the Higher Governmental Committee for the Population Census in Iraq recommended postponing the census to next year due to the Corona pandemic and the financial crisis afflicting the country due to the decline in oil prices.
The spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, Abdul Zahra Al-Hindawi, said that the committee met today and decided to postpone the population census, which was scheduled to take place in November next until the same month in 2021, and submitted a recommendation in this regard to the Council of Ministers.
Al-Hindawi explained that the census cannot be carried out in light of the Coronavirus, because the process of implementing it is carried out by 150,000 people who visit homes and families and enter data electronically.
The population of Iraq in 2017 reached more than 37 million, according to an estimate issued by the government.
The last population census was conducted in Iraq in 1997, and over the past 15 years, the political forces did not agree to conduct the census, which is the basis for the distribution of wealth in the country, drawing up development plans, evaluating their results, and setting the correct plans for reconstruction.
One of the most prominent problems that impede the conduct of this census is the existing dispute between the governments of Baghdad and Erbil regarding control of the areas subject to Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, or what is known as the disputed areas, and perhaps the most prominent of which is the oil-rich Kirkuk Governorate.
The Ministry of Planning had said earlier that the census would not include a question about the sect or sect, as some parties in Iraq demand.