TEHRAN- Head of Iran’s Planning and Budget Organization (PBO) said that 290 trillion rials (about $6.9 billion) has been paid for development projects in the country during the first half of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-September 22), Tasnim news agency reported.

Mohammad Baqer Nobakht made the remarks on Tuesday during a conference on the occasions of the National Statistics Day.

Last week, the official had announced that 430 trillion rials (about $10.2 billion) is going to be allocated for development projects in the next year’s budget plan, up 53 percent from the figure for the current year.

“We intend to invest as much as we can in development sector in the next [Iranian calendar] year (starts on March 19, 2020), so we have increased the budget for this sector by 53 percent to achieve significant growth,” Nobakht said on the sidelines of the 12th meeting of the budget headquarters on October 14.

According to the PBO head, the government is going to allocate all revenues from oil sales to the development projects following structural reforms in the next Iranian calendar year’s budget bill.

During the Tuesday gathering, Nobakht also announced that eight plans have been defined for creation of 988,000 job opportunities in the country.

MA/MA