MRC Advises MPs to Dismiss Outlines of New Budget Bill

Majlis Research Center, the research arm of Iranian Parliament, believes that the budget bill proposed by the government for the next fiscal year (March 2021-22) is riddled with fundamental flaws and has consequently called on members of the parliament to reject the bill’s outlines. 
Among the fundamental flaws enumerated by MRC are its substantial structural budget deficit (close to 50%); overestimation of revenues generated from oil exports; 30% increase in budgetary dependency on oil (including the domestic sales of oil bonds); lower government investment (a drastic decline in the share of civil development funds from general expenditure) from 15% in the current Budget Law of the fiscal 2020-21 to 11% in the budget bill of the fiscal 2021-22; a considerable rise in current expenditure (60% growth); a decline in the share of tax revenues from the budget’s general resources from 36% in the 2020-21 budget to 27% in the next budget bill; surge in operational deficit (despite objectives set in the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan (2017-22); projection of significant resources from sales of oil bonds and creation of debt adjusted with foreign exchange rate fluctuations; and the budget’s non-alignment with budgetary structural reforms.
The proposed budget will increase operating expenditure and relies on unrealistic, unrealizable revenues, according to the parliamentary think tank.