TEHRAN- The head of Iran’s Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO) announced that “Justice Shares” will be allocated to more five million-six million people by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2024).

Making the remarks in a press conference at the place of the SEO on Tuesday, Majid Eshqi said that the shares of these new people are under review by the government.

Justice Shares are a type of social impact bond that aims to finance social programs and projects with the goal of achieving social outcomes.

These bonds are similar to government bonds but are issued by private organizations or investors to fund social programs.

Justice shares are considered a kind of subsidy for providing social justice and poverty alleviation, as well as materializing privatization and reduction of government ownership in the economy and large economic enterprises.

Helping the low-income and vulnerable classes of society, making needy households independent and reducing direct government financial support to them, speeding up the process of privatization through the transfer of shares of state-owned companies, applying transparent methods for the transfer of companies’ shares, downsizing the government, balanced distribution of wealth and income in the country, and expanding the share of the cooperative sector in the country are mentioned as the major goals of these shares.

Nearly 50 million people are owners of Justice Shares who are registered in the Justice Shares system.

As mentioned, due to the targeting of this plan, the beneficiaries of Justice Shares are mostly low-income people in society, such as villagers, nomads, and seasonal workers in the construction sector.

During the Tuesday press conference, which mainly focused on the issue of holding the assembly meetings of the Justice Shares provincial equity investment companies, the SEO head stated that the main purpose of holding these meetings is to transfer the ownership will and vote of the shareholders.

“The goal of the Securities and Exchange Organization is to convey the will of ownership and the vote of the shareholders, an issue that was associated with fundamental problems in the past years”, Eshqi reiterated.

He said that the decision to hold the assembly meetings of provincial investment companies was taken in [Iranian calendar year] 1399 (March 2020-March 2021), but due to some problems including the fact that the members of the board of directors were government officials, it was not done, adding, “The selection of managers with this goal in mind that the shareholders have the right to have ownership has been seriously discussed since last year. However, due to the multitude of opinions, we reached a final conclusion in Tir [the fourth Iranian calendar month (June 21-July 22)], but since this issue still needed to be corrected, it was approved in the last session of the Supreme Council of the Stock Exchange.”