TEHRAN –Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA) has called on the government to ensure the participation of private sector representatives in the process of drafting the national budget bill for the next Iranian year (begins in late March 2025).

As the ICCIMA portal reported, Members of the ICCIMA board of representatives gathered on Sunday in a meeting with Head of the Planning and Budget Organization (PBO) Hamid Pour-Mohammadi, in which ICCIMA Head Samad Hassanzadeh called on the PBO to take the necessary measures for ensuring the participation of private sector representatives in the budget bill coordination meetings.

Speaking in this meeting, Hassanzadeh said: “The main concern of the private sector is to solve the country’s economic problems and remove the restrictions that have been imposed on production, industry, and trade, so they voice such concerns loudly and demand that the issues be addressed.”

The private sector expects the 14th government to realistically estimate its income by taking into account the realities of the domestic and global economy, the price of oil, sanctions, and the results of the U.S. elections and prevent overestimations that would negatively affect the country’s economy later.

“We expect the government to allocate some resources in the next year’s budget bill to compensate the losses caused by electricity and gas outages to the country's industries, and accelerate and promote investment in the country’s energy infrastructure by providing the necessary incentives,” the official said.

“As we all know, power outage has become a recurring pattern as one of the factors limiting the growth of the industry and has caused irreparable losses to production over the years,” he added.

ICCIMA has continuously criticized the government’s approach in ignoring the capacities and experiences of the private sector in drafting the country’s budget bill, calling for more active participation of the private sector experts in the process of drafting the bill.

EF/MA