TEHRAN- Some 60 percent of the target for divesting state-run shares to the private sector envisaged in the budget law for the present Iranian calendar year (began on March 21) has been already achieved, according to the head of Iranian Privatization Organization (IPO).

In a TV program on Sunday night, Mir Ali Ashraf Abdollah Pouri-Hosseini said that IPO still lags behind its set target due to the number of state-run companies which have been decided to be privatized, IRIB reported.

In late May, IPO published the list of the enterprises that their shares are planned to be transferred to the private sector by the end of current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2019).

As previously reported, in its planned budget for 1397, the Iranian government expects to earn some 106 trillion rials (about $2.5 billion) of income from divesting shares of sate-run companies to the private sector.

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.

MA/MA