The administration is planning to reduce the market exchange rates, since it does not regard the current one as valid, Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, vice president for planning and strategic supervision said in the closing ceremony of the 2nd Research Festival of Kish International Campus of University of Tehran on Thursday.Economic development is the result of domestic investment and productivity IRNA cited Nobakht as saying. He added that resources required for investment are highly influenced by the number of produced oil barrels, the oil prices, and the exchange rate. “However, the sanctions imposed on our country do not let us utilize our optimum capacity in producing oil and the recent plunge in the oil prices has worsened the situation.” “The current market exchange rate is not genuine and the government seeks to fix it,” he noted. Under the present circumstances where the US-led sanctions have restricted investments, the government is trying to make up for these restrictions by increasing productivity, he said. “The sole avenue to reaching productivity is via encouraging research.”Accordingly, financial resources allocated to research have increased by 34 percents in the budget bill for the upcoming year, Nobakht said. In a bid to spur knowledge-based firms, 8,500 trillion rials has been allocated to the Innovation and Prosperity Fund.
