Iranian parliament takes tough stand on budget spending

In a parliament plenary debate, Iranian parliament’s committee on budget and planning tabled a report of the audit court on government budget in 2006. Based on the report of the budget appropriation for the year 2006, more than one thousand million dollars of the government percent of benefit from oil export was not deposited in the central treasury.

According to the report, a sum of almost 60 million dollars of tax revenues on the Iranian Oil Company export activities was not deposited to the treasury as well.

An evasion of three thousand dollars had been disclosed for the year 2004 in earlier reports. Though, there are no explanations from the government on the above miscarriages.

In the parliament meeting yesterday, Ali Larijani the president asked members of the appropriation committee to seek suitable legal action for more clarification. It is expected that the report on 2007 budget will be submitted very soon to the parliament.

The Ministry of oil and the oil company had earlier disclosed that they had purchased car fuel without prior authorization from the Parliament.  

As president Ahmadi Nejad approaches the challenging period of his candidacy for the second term, the parliament’s tough stand on this report could become problematic for conservative supporters of the government. At the same time, reformists are trying to put their opponents under pressure on this report. “Etemad Melli” (National Trust) newspaper first page title reads: “One Milliard Dollars of the Oil Money was Lost”! The news paper belongs to Mehdi Karroubi a reformist cleric who has nominated himself for the coming presidential election.

Iran’s tenth presidential elections will be held in June 2009.