TEHRAN (Iran News) – President Seyed Ebrahim Raisi submitted the Budget Bill for the next Iranian year of 1402 (to start on March 20, 2023) to the Parliament on Wednesday in the presence of Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and legislators.
President Raisii, who attended the open session of the Majlis in order to present the budget bill, said, “In the fiscal year 1401, the government was able to achieve success with the cooperation of all the concerned and caring people and benefiting from their efforts, thoughts and efforts in the government, parliament and all departments that operate in the name of the holy system of the Islamic Republic.”
The President added, “The first part of the country’s 1402 budget bill, which is related to state-owned companies, was submitted to the Islamic Consultative Assembly one month earlier according to the law so that the parliament has more time to deal with the budget of this part.”
The President stated, “All our efforts were to ensure that the budget bill 1402 was fully in line with the policies announced by the Leader and the policies of the 7th Development Plan,” adding, “Of course, you are aware that the general policies of the 7th Development Plan reached us in mid-September, that is, in the middle of the drafting of the budget bill, but nevertheless, the 1402 budget was inspired by the policies announced by the Leader.”
“After the finalization of the budget bill, the government devoted its efforts to developing the 7th Development Plan so that this plan can be submitted to the parliament as soon as possible,” Raisi said.
The President stated that the government and the parliament will definitely take into consideration how far the past programs have been implemented and what were the reasons for the non-implementation of parts of these programs, and said, “Considering that the evaluations indicate that 30 to 35 per cent of the past programes have been implemented, our focus will be that the 7th Development Plan will be formulated in such a way that it will be fully implemented.”
Referring to the points considered by the Leader in the general policies of the 7th Development Plan, Ayatollah Raisi added, “One of these important points is to separate permanent orders from one-year orders so that businesses become more stable in the coming years and the parliament can review the budget bill easier”.
According to the reports, the government revenues through tax will increase by over 55$ next year comparing to this year’s budget.
Raisi considered the reform of the budget structure as one of the emphasis of the Supreme Leader and a serious necessity of the country and stated, “In the budget bill of 1402, the strengthening of production and employment has been given special attention and 540 trillion tomans for the purpose of investing state companies in the country’s economy and 327 trillion Tomans is also planned as the construction budget of the government”.
He further mentioned the 7% reduction in the tax on production units as well as the reduction in the customs tariff of livestock inputs and basic goods from 4% to 1% as tax incentives foreseen in the budget bill 1402 in order to support production and employment.
The President considered housing as an important concern of the people and their representatives in the Majlis and said, “The government will make the necessary forecasts in next year’s budget in order to provide financial resources to support the construction of housing, as well as provide the necessary credits from the transportation development fund”.
Raisi said, “We thank God that our wise nation disappointed the enemy according to our wise leader and this time, as in the past, the enemies of this nation were defeated in these conspiracies, and of course, our responsibility towards the good, pious, and sincere people who love the Revolution has doubled”.
On this basis, the President pointed out, “All the elements of the system must do their best to serve the people and take steps to solve the problems. We consider ourselves capable of solving problems and we deeply believe in the slogan of “we can” and move things forward with cooperation, empathy, coordination and convergence”.
At the end, Raisi expressed hope that next year’s budget will be the best budget compared to the previous budgets, and by announcing the imminent submission of the 7th Development Plan bill to the parliament, he thanked the people’s representatives, as well as the parliament’s presiding committee and the members of the specialized budget review commissions.
