Azerbaijan, Baku, Nov.5/ Trend G.Mehdi/
Iran is predicted to face 540 trillion rials (about $44 billion) budget deficit in the current calendar year, which began on March 20, the Mehr News Agency quoted Iranian Parliamentary Economic Committee Chairman Gholamreza Mesbahi-Moqaddam as saying on Monday.
He rejected previous estimations on the budget deficit, saying that the figure is around 540 trillion rials not 740 trillion rials (some 60 billion).
On Thursday, the Fars News Agency quoted Mesbahi-Moqaddam as saying that oil incomes have decreased and that the country is facing an unfavorable economic condition.
He put the current volume of oil sales at around 1.03 million barrels per day, saying that the figure had been targeted at 2.5 mbpd.
On October 29, Iran's OPEC governor Mohammad-Ali Khatibi said that the country's oil exports have remained steady in recent months. "Iran's oil exports are the same as previous months and the situation is stable," ISNA quoted Khatibi as saying.
The West is pressing Iran into shutting down its nuclear program for fear that Tehran may eventually develop nuclear weapons.
But Tehran claims that all of its nuclear research is exclusively peaceful in character.
The EU imposed an embargo on purchasing oil and oil products from Iran in July this year, while in October, Brussels adopted another major package of economic sanctions.
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