Deputy Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, Hamid Kalantari, said on Sunday that the government is to allocate 5,500 billion rials ($159 million) in the next year budget to stimulate the cooperatives sector.
“After it is ratified by the parliament, the sum will be transferred to certain banks, and then the banks will provide financial assistance to the cooperative units,” he was quoted by ISNA as saying.
Kalantari lamented that in previous years the government’s envisaged budget for the cooperative sector was ratified by the parliament, but that the government failed to provide for the resources through which the budget was supposed to be earned.
He expressed hope that the anticipated resources of the cooperatives budget for this year will be materialized.
“The budget allocated by the government to the cooperatives during the past years was initially financed through privatization,” he underlined.
Article 44 of the Constitution stipulates that the national economy falls into three categories of public, cooperative and private sectors. It explicitly underlines the role and significance of the cooperative sector when it reads that public sector operations should be limited to a certain extent and that the private sector is complementary to the public and cooperative sectors.
