General revenues stand at 4.07 quadrillion rials ($38.76 billion) in the budget bill for the fiscal 2019-20, proposed on Tuesday to the Parliament by President Hassan Rouhani. It has made the budget 5.44% bigger compared to the budget law for the current year (March 2018-19), Financial Tribune reported.
"In the preliminary version of the bill, general revenues were set at 4.33 quadrillion rials ($41.23 billion)," Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, head of Plan and Budget Organization of Iran (PBO), said.
"Improving the livelihoods of the Iranians, stimulating domestic production and boosting employment are at the core of next year's budget," President.ir reported.
The new budget bill has been devised on a positive note despite the renewed economic sanctions imposed by the Administration of US President Donald Trump on 5th November. “Our investment growth reached from minus 17.4 percent to plus 3.4 percent, meaning all our indicators had become positive and we were moving towards our goals by choosing the right direction,” the Iranian president said after submitting the fiscal document to the country's Parliament. That was when “the Americans implemented their evil plot to sanction the Iranian nation,” he added, according to the Iranian media.
Trump pulled the US out of an international nuclear deal with Iran, the EU, Russia and China in May alleging the agreement is disastrous for the US. The Iranian national currency rial suffered record highs during the past months but Tehran has been able to rein in on the turbulent foreing exchange and commodities markert.
The International Monetary Fund has predicted that the Iranian economy will contract this year as well as the next.
The budget proposal had been sent by the Plan and Budget Organization of Iran to the parliament as scheduled on Dec. 6, despite the parliamentary recess, only to be sent back to the organization to be revised on the order of the Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.
A reduction in government spending and the economy’s reliance on oil revenues were some of the reforms suggested by the Leader. Apparently, these reforms have been incorporated into the text of the budget bill.
Rouhani also blamed Iran’s “unhealthy economic structures”, including its reliance on oil revenues, for making the country vulnerable to the sanctions.
“If the private sector had been active in the country ... and if the budget had not relied heavily on oil, the impact of sanctions would have been much less,” Rouhani said.
"If the structures had been healthy, I can claim that we could have had a budget without oil this year and last year," Rouhani added.