According to the Iran regime’s media reports, the 2021-2022 public-private partnership bill will pave the way for legalized corruption in the coming years.
The 2021-2022 budget bill has run into problems. Serious doubts about the realization of the budget line to the staggering increase in taxes and sales of government assets and the scandals over rising prices of energy carriers and the impact of removing preferential currency from some imported goods account for this.
Moreover, another case that has become a source of great concern among the regime’s economists is the so-called ‘Public-Private Partnership Bill’.
According to the regime’s media and Ahmad Tavakoli’s ‘Transparency and Justice Watch Organization,’ the ‘public-private partnership bill’ is currently being pursued under two parallel axes in the Iranian parliament. Tavakoli belongs to the regime’s principlist faction close to supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
First, in the 2021-2022 Budget Consolidation Commission, under the note of the four budget laws of 2021-2022, Ebrahim Raisi’s government intends to recognize transfers to the private sector.
Secondly, in the Civil Commission of the regime’s parliament, it has been decided to review and decide on the bill proposed by the regime and instructions by the Planning and Budget Organization.
According to this instruction and note, some 86,000 projects are to be selected within two months of the date of the budget announcement, without even specifying the mechanism of this selection and even though the owners of these projects must submit these projects within one month.
‘Transparency and Justice Watch’ quotes Ahmad Tavakoli as saying that the corruption that is being observed now has started from the top of the regime and should be pursued by the officials and agencies in charge of monitoring and dealing with those who are corrupt.
On November 2, 2021, the state-run daily Shargh wrote, “The background to the Public-Private Partnership bill shows that it was drafted by a group of profiteers so that they can institutionalize corruption, graft, and discrimination in the legislative and executive process through legislation. According to official statistics and statements, there are more than 86,000 semi-finished construction projects in the country. Ten billion rials in credit was allocated to complete each one.”
The report says that no government can bear the cost of completing these projects, so under this pretext, they try to hand them over to their friends for a small price, which is the source of disputes and conflicts of rival mafia currents.
