Tehran, Iran, Dec. 12
By Mehdi Sepahvand – Trend:
Although it is a fact that the government has decreased Iran’s development budget in the national budget bill for the next fiscal year, this would not necessarily translate into lower development investment, an expert says.
The government has in the meantime devised other mechanisms that would make up for the drop in the budget bill, Hedayatollah Moazzami told Trend December 12.
This week the administration proposed to decrease the country’s development budget by 15 percent, 60 trillion tomans (about $17.1 billion). In the meantime, some economy figures, such as Masoud Khansari, the chairman of Tehran Chamber of Commerce, criticized the government for this.
According to Moazzami, the deficit will be fixed via mechanisms such as ministries’ incomes being allocated to developmental projects. The bill obliges ministries to spend 30 percent of their incomes in developmental projects in their own areas of operation, he noted.
The expert added that a big sum of money from the National Development Fund will also go into developmental projects in the coming fiscal year.
Nevertheless, he noted, the banking and monetary mechanisms as well as foreign investment will be used to increase investment in developmental projects beyond what could be invested through the same amount of development budget as last years.