Tehran, Iran, Sept. 23
By Mehdi Sepahvand – Trend:
Out of 1,111 companies assigned for privatization, 545 have been sold so far, according to Jafar Sobhani, a consultant to the director of Iran Privatization Organization.
The progress has been made in 15 years since the launch of the organization, he told ILNA news agency September 23.
There are 201 companies that are planned to be privatized by the end of the current Iranian fiscal year (March 20), he stated.
The companies assigned for the current year fall in the areas of rail transport, fabrics, petrochemicals, oil, gas, machines, metals, and agriculture, he noted.
Filling stations comprise the biggest group of this year’s privatization in terms of volume, Sobhani underlined.
He added that 18 percent of the companies that have been privatized so far by the organization have gone to real private entities, adding that 38 percent of the entire privatizations in the history of the organization were carried out by the incumbent government.
A recent report said the Rouhani administration privatized 391.809 trillion rials ($12.5 billion at 31,269 rials per USD) worth of assets.
Since the Privatization Organization was launched in 2001, it has privatized 1,418.256 trillion rials of governmental shares.