Iran Says “One Trillion Toman” Allocated in 2021 Budget for Corona Vaccine Purchase

Mozgan Khanloo, spokesperson for the 2021 budget, announced on Monday, December 7, a “138 percent” increase in allocations for Iran’s Ministry of Health in the coming year, stating that one trillion toman has been allocated for purchasing corona vaccine.

This announcement comes while previously Hamid Pourasghari, deputy for scientific, cultural and social affairs at the Plan and Budget Organization, had said that the purchase and import of foreign corona vaccine does not have a separate line item in the 2021 budget bill.

According to Pourasghari, however, a budget has been allocated for it under the subset of the medicine and infant formula line.

The 2021 budget spokesperson announced the vaccine purchase allocation at a time when earlier Abdolnasser Hemmati, governor of the Central Bank of Iran, had stated that Iran needs authorization from the U.S. Treasury Department to transfer currency related to vaccine purchases to the World Health Organization account, and this path “has faced obstacles.”

Said Namaki, Iran’s Minister of Health, also announced on December 26 that Iran intends to purchase 42 million vaccine doses through two contracts with foreign companies, but made no mention of how to finance these contracts.

Health Ministry officials are announcing plans to purchase foreign vaccines while clinical trials of two vaccines—Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna—have completed their final phases, and many European countries, the United States, and Israel have pre-ordered doses of these vaccines.

Britain began its vaccination program on Tuesday, and Germany has announced it will implement the program starting in January.

Russian and Chinese vaccines, which Iran hopes to purchase, are still in the experimental phase.

Source: Radio Farda