Financial statements of the Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO), the capital market regulator, indicate 52% decline in its income in the last fiscal year that ended in March.
According to data published by the SEO News Agency, the decline was largely due to the fall in SEO income from trading fees.
Citing financial data published on the Codal website, SENA said that the SEO generated 5.03 trillion rials ($16.2 million) in trading fees, almost a third down on the preceding year.
The decline was related to fees received from deals handled by the Tehran Stock Exchange and the junior equities exchange Iran Fara Bourse.
This is while SEO income from trading fees from the Iran Mercantile Exchange and Iran Energy Exchange increased from 1.72 trillion rials in fiscal 2020-21 to 2.98 trillion rials ($9.6 million) last year.
SEO income was apparently impacted by the deep decline in the share market last year and is linked to investor aversion to participate in the struggling market following an historic collapse in the summer 2020. The downturn continues to this day.
Data released by the SEO indicate slight gain in blue chips while majority of small caps took a drubbing last year.
The benchmark of Tehran Stock Exchange, TEDPIX, was up barely 4.5% in that year while the TSE’s equal-weighted index lost a massive 21%.
The former index is highly sensitive to performance of fewer large caps while the latter best reflects small caps, which are a majority in the market.
Recession in the stock market also took a toll on government revenue from taxes on stock trade last year, unlike the good performance a year before.
According to data from the Central Securities Depository of Iran, the government made 53 trillion rials ($170 million) last year, down 70% annually.
In the preceding year, it had earned 179.89 trillion ($580 million) in tax on stock trade given the unprecedented boom in the share market in the first half of the year, recording a historic 445% annual growth.
Known as financial transaction tax (FTT), tax on stock is levied for buying and selling a stock, bond, or other financial contract like options and derivatives.
