TEHRAN- The national budget bill for the next Iranian calendar year 1398, which starts on March 21, 2019, has envisaged transferring 50 trillion rials (about $1.19 billion) worth of state-run shares to the private sector, Mohammadreza Pour-Ebrahimi, the chairman of the Parliament Economic Committee, told IRNA on Tuesday.

As previously reported, in its planned budget for the current Iranian calendar year, 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.

In a TV program two months ago, Mir Ali Ashraf Abdollah Pouri-Hosseini, the head of Iranian Privatization Organization (IPO), said: “Some 60 percent of the target for divesting state-run shares to the private sector envisaged in the budget law for the present year has been already achieved.”

He also said that IPO still lagged behind its set target due to the number of state-run companies which had been decided to be privatized.

In late May, 2018, 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).

MA/MA