TEHRAN (AFP) -- Iran's Parliament Wednesday abandoned plans to ration fuel and instead increased the budget for the import of petrol and allocated a billion dollars toward improving the public transport system.

The Parliament had on Tuesday given tentative approval for the spending of an extra 2.2 billion dollars on petrol imports, slashing by more than a third the 3.5 billion dollars requested by the government, and mooted the rationing of fuel effective December 22.

On Wednesday, however, the rationing option could not obtain sufficient ‘Yes’ votes from lawmakers in an intense polling session and was abandoned.

Other fuel-saving measures such as a dual-pricing mechanism, an increase in the petrol price and payment of direct subsidies to consumers were also not able to muster enough support.

Instead the legislature voted to add 300 million dollars to the 2.2 billion it had already approved for the import of petrol. It also passed a law to spend an additional one billion dollars "to improve the national transportation grid, in particular purchase of public vehicles and expand the subway system."

In February, Parliament approved a 2.5 billion dollar budget for petrol imports which ran out by late September due to higher oil prices, rising consumption and the smuggling out of the country of millions of liters of petrol every month.

Iran's refineries with a capacity of 42 million liters of petrol a day cannot cover the lavish national consumption of more than 70 million liters daily.

Lawmakers in agreeing to allocate funds for improving public transport argued that preconditions for rationing laid out in the Budget law had not yet been met.

The law obliges the government to expand the public transportation fleet, increase the number of gas-fueled cars and provide "smart cards" to monitor individual consumption before resorting to fuel rationing.