TEHRAN- The shares of three petrochemical companies will be offered at the stock market in the next Iranian calendar year, which starts on March 21, 2019, IRNA reported on Sunday.

Two of the companies i.e. Bandar Imam and Bulai Sina are located in the port city of Mahshahr (in the southwestern province of Khuzestan) and one of them named Nouri is in the port city of Assaluyeh (in the southwestern province of Bushehr).

On January 1, Mohammadreza Pour-Ebrahimi, the chairman of the Parliament Economic Committee, told IRNA that the national budget bill for the next Iranian calendar year 1398 has envisaged transferring 50 trillion rials (about $1.19 billion) worth of state-run shares to the private sector.

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.

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.

The head of Iran Privatization Organization has said that this organization still lags behind its set target due to the number of state-run companies which have been decided to be privatized.

MA/MA