The number of Covid-19 outpatients in the capital of Tehran has increased by 1% compared to the previous week, signaling the resurgence of the disease in coming weeks, the head of the city’s coronavirus taskforce said.
The number of Covid-19 outpatients in the capital of Tehran has increased by 1% compared to the previous week, signaling the resurgence of the disease in coming weeks, the head of the city’s coronavirus taskforce said.
President Hassan Rouhani assured the nation of a bright future for the Iranian economy, as the failure of the US economic war will open a new chapter in trade ties.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is on a regional tour of Caucasian countries, met Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev in Baku on Monday.
Oil prices edged up on Monday as a weaker dollar offset fresh concerns about the hit to global fuel demand from renewed lockdowns to curb the spike in Covid-19 infections.
Iran is the largest producer and exporter of gasoline in the Middle East and exports directly to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Armenia, the Republic of Azerbaijan and Iraqi Kurdistan, a deputy oil minister said Monday.
“In 2017 our gasoline production was 59 million liters per day. In 2019 it reached 107 million liters,” ISNA quoted Alireza Sadeqabadi as saying.
Iran imported “17 million liters of gasoline per day in 2017, and if timely were not taken the country would need to import 40 million liters per day of gasoline in 2019.”
The Persian Gulf Star Refinery, launched in 2018, was indeed a changemaker in weaning away from importing gasoline from that year and soon after exporting the fuel to neighbors, Sadeqabadi noted.
The National Iranian South Oil Company collects more than 19 million cubic meters of associate petroleum gas per day in cooperation with private firms and in line with the plan to zero gas flaring in the southern and southwestern regions, head of the Health, Safety and Environment Department of the company said.
“Several environmental projects have been defined and carried out in recent years with the help of private companies to trap APG from oil and gas fields,” the Oil Ministry news agency Shana quoted Mohammad Reza Naderi as saying.
The plans include collection of 1 million cubic meters of APG per day from Parsi Oilfield and 620,000 cubic meters from the Marun field among others.
A total of 59,474 trucks have carried Iranian goods to their export destinations from Bazargan border checkpoint located in West Azarbaijan Province’s Maku County since the beginning of the current Iranian year on March 20, 2020, to register a 45% decline compared with the similar period of last year.
According to Jaber Akbarzadeh, a local official, the exports mainly included agricultural, petrochemical, stone and metal products, IRNA reported on Sunday.
The official added that a total of 67,659 trucks carried import goods into the country through Bazargan over the same period, registering a 52.16% year-on-year drop.
Mayor Pirouz Hanachi submitted Tehran Municipality’s budget for the next fiscal year (March 2021-22) to Tehran City Council on Sunday.
“The budget is set in two sections: the main budget is 476.87 trillion rials [$2 billion] and the complementary section’s budget is at 22.74 trillion rials [$96 million], which is designed to carry out 32 special projects,” Hanachi was quoted as saying by ISNA.
Municipalities of different districts and counties, development of public transport bus services and expansion of Tehran’s subway network to the city of Parand in Robat Karim County, southwest of the capital, as well as increasing payments to municipal pensioners have received special funding in the budget bill.
“Since Feb. 21, 2020, Tehran Municipality became embroiled with the coronavirus crisis; it was among the very first organizations, after the Health Ministry, which was directly affected by the virus outbreak and suffered the most eventually. A large share of revenues did not materialize last [fiscal] year. At present, only 30% of the nominal capacity of public transportation are in service. Many of the sports facilities belonging to the municipality were shut down and complexes designed for providing tourism services were closed or semi-active. Yet, under the circumstances, Tehran Municipality has not tapped into government funds so far,” Hanachi said.
Home construction loans in urban slum areas have been paid to 17,000 applicants since last year (March 2019-20) up until now, Mohammad Hassan Alamdari, a senior official with Bank Maskan, the state agent bank of the housing sector, said.
“The total value of these loans stands at 10,870 billion rials [$45.8 million],” he was quoted as saying by Hibna.
“The ceiling on loans for construction of new buildings in urban slum areas has increased to 3.5 billion rials ($14,700),” managing director of Urban Regeneration Corporate Holding Company and deputy minister of roads and urban development, Mehdi Obouri, said in April 2020.
Obouri noted that licensed real-estate developers, planning to reconstruct residential buildings in Tehran’s slum areas, will be granted 2.5 billion rials ($10,000) in loans; they can also take out housing bonds worth 1 billion rials ($4,200) from Bank Maskan, the state-agent bank of the housing sector.
“A maximum of 2.3 billion rials [$9,700] of construction loans will be granted to professional real-estate developers planning to build new buildings in the slum areas of other large cities and provincial capitals with a population of over 200,000 and 1.4 billion rials [$6,000] to those in cities with fewer than 200,000 residents.
The Third International and Specialized Exhibition of Dates and Related Equipment and Industries, also known as “DATEX 2021”, opened in the southwestern Fars Province on Monday and will run through Jan. 29.
The Producer Price Index for industrial-scale livestock farms (using 2011 as the base year) stood at 748.95 in the third quarter of the current Iranian year (Sept. 22-Dec. 20, 2020), indicating a 26.97% and 47.78% increase compared with the preceding quarter and the same quarter of last year, respectively.
Majlis Joint Commission has doubled the resources for the targeted subsidies policy in the next fiscal year’s (March 2021-22) budget.
The Expenditure Committee of the parliamentary commission blueprinted next year’s cash and non-cash payment of subsidies on Saturday; they integrated two income grant plans and added more resources to pay a new round of handouts to the needy, Fars News Agency reported.
Majlis Joint Commission, composed of representatives of all specialized parliamentary commissions, is responsible for reviewing budget bills as well as five-year development plans proposed by the government before they are put to a vote by MPs.
The commission has projected 1,400 trillion rials ($6 billion) in new resources that will be gained from the elimination of subsidized foreign currency at the rate of 42,000 rials per US dollar that is being granted to import essential goods for three years now.
Also known as necessity goods, essential goods are products consumers will buy, regardless of changes in income levels.
Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Farhad Dejpasand has appointed Hassan-Ali Qanbari-Maman as the new head of Iranian Privatization Organization.
Iran Insurance Company, the sole state-owned and the largest insurance company, is expected to play a leading role in digitizing the sector and developing innovative services.
"Given the IIC's professional workforce, we expect IIC to help expand the scope of insurance service in the country, and foster digitalization," Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the Central Insurance company of Iran, was quoted as saying at a meeting with new CEO of IIC earlier this week.
Majid Bakhtiari was appointed the new IIC boss last week. He is tasked with improving the profitability of the company, developing a core insurance platform and diversifying services.
First Vice President Es'haq Jahangiri instructed Mohammad Nahavandian, the veep for economic affairs, to revise rules set for regulating trade in steel products.
In a letter published on Monday, Jahangiri said the mechanism needs to be revisited in a way that "it does not send a negative signal to the bourse."
The emphasis reflects concern that the potentially adverse steel pricing decision is undermining the stock market already in turmoil, which observers say is a “victim” of unhelpful government intervention in pricing products of listed companies.
The letter was also in response to the criticism by Labor Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari who said the rules for regulating steel market are a bane for the equity market and steel export, ISNA reported.
The secondary foreign exchange market, Nima, has seen significant growth in currency supply in recent days, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran said.
The share market regulator is working on a plan of action to minimize the impact of big shareholders performance on retail trade in the bourse, the CEO of Tehran Stock Exchange said.
"The blueprint should help curtail the sway of big stockholders" on the stock market, Ali Sahra'ee wrote in a note in his Twitter account, the Securities and Exchange News Agency reported.
Sahra'ee said the draft plan was finalized at the TSE's board meeting on Sunday and will come into effect soon. "In the plan the frequency of deals in retail and block trade will be monitored regularly.”
Iran has launched a tech center specialized in auto parts production to speed up localization efforts in the automotive industry and thwart the limiting effects of US sanction.
Vice Presidential Office for Science and Technology, in collaboration with Iran’s auto parts maker Crouse Company, has invested €3 million in the tech center, SNN reported.
It has been awhile since the innovation center became operational, but it was officially inaugurated by Vice President Sorena Sattari on Saturday.
Based near Tehran and spread over 2,500 square meters, the center has absorbed 250 professionals and 30 university students of different majors who are working on over 120 tech projects related to automotive and parts industry.
Tech units at the center have so far designed three types of central control units, an airbag system and numerous electronic components. Work is also on track for the design of radar and navigation systems.
Speaking at the inauguration event, Sattari said innovation in design, optimization and development are the most prominent criteria for turning the domestic auto industry into a dynamic sector, which cannot be realized unless the growing technology ecosystem is involved.
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