Bank accounts of all public organizations should be transferred from commercial banks to the Central Bank of Iran, a deputy minister of economy said.
“The treasury will be in charge of all receipts and payments of public sector accounts. Nobody would be able to receive or pay unusually high salaries, as the treasury will directly pay the salary of civil servants,” ILNA also quoted Hossein Mir Shojaeian as saying on Tuesday.
The need for strictly regulating government resources gained traction after the scandal concerning the payment of astronomical salary to executives at state-owned entities erupted in July. The scandal prompted President Hassan Rouhani to enforce drastic anti-corruption measures such as capping executive salaries, including those of ministers and bank CEOs.
“Aggregating public accounts in CBI is a significant step taken by the government to increase the transparency of public accounts,” the deputy minister said.
“[Once launched] the electronic treasury would solve all the issues [in this regard].”
Mir Shojaeian said the measure will enhance transparency regarding the government’s financial operations and prevent illegal payments to officials.
“We believe that no entity should have a secret or hidden bank accounts.”
Earlier in January, CBI said it was working on fundamental measures to help the treasury, mainly through digitalization of operations.
The central bank unveiled NASIM platform in August, which stands for the Persian equivalent of “modern comprehensive system of CBI”. It is a platform for managing and overseeing the government’s resources.
NASIM is set to be used to gather the government’s resources in a single account in the central bank, with the level of access to the account strictly supervised and monitored. It would be able to host payments and transactions of government entities, once the second phase is fully developed.
