Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb.17
By Fatih Karimov - Trend: The second phase of the subsidy reform plan in Iran envisages gaining 480 trillion rials (about $19.3 billion) from raising fuel prices, IRNA quoted Iranian MP Mehrdad Lahouti as saying on Feb. 17.
The current year's budget act has envisaged that fuel price rise income will hit 280 trillion rials (about $11.2 billion), but the next year's budget projects that the figure will be 480 trillion rials, he explained.
It means that the 200-trillion-rial change should be paid by the Iranian people, he noted.
The Iranian parliament (Majlis) approved the government implementing the second phase of the subsidy reform plan at the beginning of the second quarter of the next Iranian calendar year (to startMarch 21), Iran's IRNA News Agency reported on Feb. 4.
Mohsen Bahrami Arzi, an advisor to the vice president for executive affairs, said on Jan. 28 that the government expects about 30 per cent of Iranian families to give up receiving cash subsidies.
"Currently the number of people who receive cash subsidies is even more than the country's population," he said.
"Many have migrated to foreign countries but they still receive cash subsidies, some have two or more ID cards and some are foreign nationals," Bahrami Arzi explained.
President Rouhani's chief of staff, Mohammad Nahavandian, said in November that the Iranian administration is not going to cut the cash subsidies of rich families since identifying such families is a kind of breach of their privacy.
This is while the budget and planning committee of the Iranian parliament (Majlis) on October 20, 2013 approved stopping 30 percent of cash subsidy payments.
Edited by C.N.