Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct.7/ Trend, F. Karimov/
The Iranian administration owes 540 trillion rials (about $21.6 billion based on the USD official exchange rate of 24,900 rials) to the Social Security Organization, the Fars News Agency quoted the organization's managing director Mohammad Yarahmadian as saying.
The organization is facing 50 trillion rials (about $2 billion) budget deficit, he added.
In an exclusive article for Trend, Pr.Kamran Dadkhah, the associate professor in the department of economics at Northeastern University, Boston, said that on June 9 of this year Mr. Shamseddin Hosseini, Iran's ex-minister of finance, declared that the government and government companies and organizations owed the central bank the equivalent of 350 trillion rials.
Then Mr. Ahmad Tavakoly, a member of the Iranian Majlis (parliament) declared that the government has reevaluated its dollar deposits in the central bank using the new official exchange rate.
Since the difference between the new rate and old rate is 12,740 rials and since the government had deposited $58 billion, this would add 740 trillion rials to the government deposits in the bank. If we believe the numbers of the finance minister and Mr. Tavakoly, then the government has wiped out its debt to the central bank and has even 390 trillion rials extra to bequeath to the next government.
But this is no more than legerdemain (an accounting trick). The government could have set the official rate at 30,000 rials per dollar and in that case the difference would have been 1029 trillion rials. But an economy cannot be managed with accounting tricks.