Tehran, Iran, Dec. 16
By Milad Fashtami - Trend:
The construction budget of next Iranian calendar year (to start on March 21) will not cover the expenses of finishing incomplete projects.
Head of Iran World Trade Center Mohammad Reza Sabzalipour told Trend New Agency on Dec. 16 that the proposed construction budget for the next year is 2,673,572 billion rials (some $93.8 billion dollars based on the proposed official exchange rate of US dollar for the next year).
"The figure is around 32 percent of the country's total budget," he noted.
"The governments annually present a certain figure for the country's construction budget to the Majlis (parliament) and that figure, more or less, will be approved. But the problem is that the governments usually face a budget deficit. Therefore, they always cut the construction budget to pay for the current expenses," Sabzalipour said, adding that in that case most of the projects will be left incomplete.
He went on to note that budget deficit in the next year would also be inevitable.
"The government will not be able to pay for all its spending in the current year, so some of the debts will be transferred to next year's budget plan. Given the fact that oil prices are falling and Iran's oil revenues are decreasing, budget deficit in the next year will also be unavoidable," Sabzalipour said.
"So we can predict that the government will not allocate the proposed figure to the construction section in reality and many projects will be left incomplete."
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