TEHRAN- Iranian Finance and Economic Affairs Minister Farhad Dejpasand said offering the shares of state-owned companies, which are planned to be privatized, will be sped up, IRIB reported.

The minister made the remarks on the sidelines of a meeting of Stock Market High Council on Wednesday attended also by Securities and Exchange Organization’s Head Shapour Mohammadi and Central Bank of Iran’s Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati.

He further highlighted that Iran’s stock market is reaching its real status, adding, “People are gradually getting acquainted with the capital market’s potential and welcoming it.”

Dejpasand had previously said that the government should amend its policies and methods of setting the prices and transferring the shares in the process of privatization.

In its planned budget for the current Iranian year (ends on March 19), the Iranian government had expected to earn some 106 trillion rials (about $2.5 billion) of income from divesting shares of sate-run companies to the private sector.

In Iran, implementation of privatization plan aimed at more productivity, investment making, job creation, promotion of trade balance, more competition in domestic economy, and reducing financial and management burden on the government has been under the spotlight over the past decade.

The law on implementation of the general policies of the Article 44 of Iran's Constitution on privatizing state-owned companies was declared in 2006 in a bid to downsize the government and promote the private sector’s role in the national economy.

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. Under the present interpretation of the Article 44, some state-owned companies have been privatized to reduce their financial burden on the country’s budget and also increase their productivity. 

Downsizing the government is on the agenda, but a number of factors has been hindering privatization trend in the country, among them government’s high interference in the management of the transferred companies is a challenging one.

MA/MA