Baku, Azerbaijan, March 3
By Gazenfer Hamidov – Trend:
The latest official statistics indicate that the value of privatization in Iran has significantly decreased during the current year.
The Iranian administration has transferred over 12,044 billion rials (each USD makes 37,300 rials based on official rate) worth of the state-run shares to the private sector during the current fiscal year (March 20, 2017, Feb. 23, 2018).
The Iranian Privatization Organization(IPO) managed to sell 106 billion rials of assets on the Stock Exhcnage in the period, the organization said in its latest statistics.
Compared to the last fiscal year (ended March 2017), when 5,306 billion rials of state-run companies were sold on Stock Market, the value of the privatization through capital market has witnessed a dramatic decrease this year.
Also, 11,939 billion rials of governmental companies’ shares were sold through tenders.
The government envisioned a large privatization program in the Fifth Five-Year National Development Plan (2010-2015), aiming to privatize about 20 percent of the state-owned firms each year.
Through privatization of governmental companies, Iranian government seeks to restructure the country's economy and reduce the government's expenses by promoting the private sector.
Increasing productivity levels in large enterprises is also among the main objectives of selling the shares of governmental companies.
Iran plans to privatize some 337 state-run companies by March 2018.
Since the Privatization Organization was launched in 2001, it has privatized 1,446.4 trillion rials of governmental shares.