Raisi promulgates "Budget Law 1401"; increases budget share of military and cyberspace monitoring institutions

On Tuesday, Ebrahim Raisi notified the country's 1401 (2022) budget law to the National Planning and Budget Organization for implementation. This is the first budget compiled by the 13th government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has major changes in terms of both content and method compared to previous budgets.

According to the Iranian Presidential Information Center, Raisi notified the budget law approved in a public session of the Islamic Consultative Assembly on Wednesday, March 15, 1402, to the National Planning and Budget Organization for implementation, even though the budget bill had been submitted to the Assembly by the government on December 11, 1402.

The overall ceiling for the 1401 budget has been set at 3,631 trillion Tomans, which is an increase of 750 trillion Tomans compared to the previous year, and an important part of the source of this difference in the amount is the 61 percent increase in projected tax revenues and the elimination of the specific subsidy in the preferential currency of 4,200 Tomans. These issues could lead to significant economic challenges in society.

One of the most significant areas of increase in Iran's 2022 budget is its military and weapons sector, with an allocation of at least four billion and five hundred million euros by the State Planning and Budget Organization of Ebrahim Raisi.

The budget of the Revolutionary Guards this year has increased by about 240 percent, and its initial amount is 93 trillion tomans, which, given the granted powers approved by the Consolidation Commission of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, has the possibility of further increases throughout the year.

A noteworthy point in this regard is that part of the Islamic Republic's military budget is financed by "delivering crude oil and gas condensate for export to individuals" based on the daily export price, an event that also occurred in the final years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government and led to "major economic corruption" and the arrest of individuals such as Babak Zanjani as "oil brokers."

Among the executive agencies of the Islamic Republic, the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Health, the Joint Staff of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Martyrs' Foundation, the Law Enforcement Forces, the Joint Staff of the Army, the Judiciary, and the Ministry of Science have the largest budget share this year.

The Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, with 138,840 billion Tomans of funding, was at the top of the government's proposed bill from the very beginning. The ministry's share of the spending appropriations in this year's budget is 14.39 percent, which is the largest share compared to other executive agencies.

The budget allocated to the Iranian Broadcasting Organization, which is managed under the supervision of the representative of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, was not only 5,289 billion tomans from the very beginning, a 56% increase over the previous year, but was also accompanied by an "increase in special powers."

With the approval of the Islamic Consultative Assembly's consolidation commission in March of last year, SATRA (the Regulatory Organization for Inclusive Audio and Video Media in Cyberspace), which is a newly established subsidiary of the Iranian Broadcasting Corporation, has received a budget of 11.6 trillion Tomans, a six-fold increase compared to 2014, to monitor and control all "inclusive" content produced in cyberspace.

The Islamic Consultative Assembly also approved in early March that the price of oil per barrel be increased from $60 to $70 and the sales volume to 1.4 million barrels per day.

The 13th government of the Islamic Republic has predicted that it will earn 381 trillion tomans in revenue this year from "oil sales," and 351 trillion tomans of this revenue will come from "oil exports."

These figures come at a time when the 2014 budget included 349 trillion tomans in revenue from oil sales, and the Iranian government had predicted that it would earn 153 trillion tomans from oil exports, but this revenue has increased by 106 percent this year.

Source: Voice of America