The parliamentary commission in charge of reviewing the budget bill for fiscal year March 2008-09 has approved the general outlines of the document.
The Majlis Joint Commission completed its assessment late Tuesday after eight days of deliberations.
Hamid Reza Hajibabei, an MP who represents the western city of Hamedan, told ISNA on Wednesday in Tehran that the parliament will begin reviewing the bill from February 12, predicting that the process will take less time than in previous years.
Meanwhile, the commission rejected a proposal to end gasoline rationing next year and increase prices.
“The Majlis Joint Commission voted against the proposal to increase gasoline price to 2,500 rials per liter (over 22 cents) and halt rationing,“ Mohammad Reza Tabesh, a member of the commission, said Wednesday in Tehran.
Gasoline is currently sold for 1,000 rials (11 cents) per liter.
Results of joint meetings between lawmakers and Oil Ministry officials reveal that the government needs $6.5 billion for imports of gasoline in the next year, he told Fars news agency.
“Since commissioners turned down the proposal, the final decision on gasoline price for the next (Iranian) year rests with the Majlis.“
Meanwhile, a member of the Majlis Plan, Audit and Budget Commission, Morteza Tamaddon reiterated that since there were no other suggestions, decision-making on the issue would go to the Majlis.
Continuation of the procedure implemented during the current Iranian year to March 2007 is a possibility, he stressed.
In a related development, international affairs director at the National Iranian Oil Company, Hojjatollah Ghanimifard said Tuesday that Iran is importing 15 million liters (about 94,000 barrels) of gasoline per day and did not expect this figure to change in the next 12 months.
He further said Iran was having no trouble buying fuel, even though some banks have stopped opening letters of credit.
“In many cases, you can find other means that will be faster and easier,“ Ghanimifard told reporters on the sidelines of a London energy conference, responding to a question about letters of credit, reported Reuters.
Iran introduced rationing in late June, 2007 to curb lavish gasoline consumption as the commodity is heavily subsidized.
The world’s fourth-largest oil producer lacks refining capacity and so imports fuel, which it then sells at heavily subsidized prices. Iran is the second-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Exports in January averaged 2.45 million bpd, Ghanimifard said, steady from the previous month.

Tahmasb Mazaheri

Allies of the US in the Persian Gulf, such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, are helping shield Iran’s banking system from Washington’s ’financial terrorism’, the governor of Central Bank of Iran said on Tuesday.
The United States has been trying to cut Iran’s access to global financial system by putting pressure on Persian Gulf Arab governments to isolate Iran, which it accuses of seeking nuclear weapons.
The pressure is not working because cultural, political and economic ties between Persian Gulf oil producers were too strong, Tahmasb Mazaheri told Reuters at an Islamic Finance Conference in Manama, Bahrain.
“Neither us nor our neighbors will sacrifice our long-term interests because of the unilateral pressures,“ Mazaheri said.
“Particularly in the region, Bahrain and the Emirates and other neighbors all around Iran’s borders, we have a lot of partners who are working with us in the long term,“ he said.
He did not explain what form their assistance took.
Iran, which has repeatedly asserted its nuclear program is peaceful, has long had close economic ties with Persian Gulf states, especially in the UAE and Bahrain, Arab allies of Washington and home to the Middle East’s biggest financial centers. “The pressure is a unilateral pressure,“ Mazaheri said.
“I call it kind of financial terrorism in the financial industry...and it cannot be tolerated by the global financial system,“ he said.
“The central bank assists Iranian private and state-owned banks to meet their commitments regardless of the pressure on them,“ he said.
The US, which has a naval base in Bahrain, is pressing the United Nations to tighten sanctions on Iran, the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Iran, also holder of the world’s second-largest reserves of natural gas, was retaliating by diversifying its more than $72 billion of reserves away from the weak US currency, Mazaheri said.
“We have tried to avoid keeping dollars and giving the dollar the benefit (of demand from our reserves),“ he said, declining to give a breakdown of the reserves.
The central bank’s motivations for diversifying its reserves were both ’political and also because of the trend of the weakening dollar’, Mazaheri said.
The dollar fell to record lows against the euro and a basket of major currencies last year.

Iran’s oil production has reached its highest level since the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari said, according to PIN.
“With the production of 4.185 million barrels of oil yesterday (Tuesday), we set a new record after the Islamic Revolution,“ announced the minister on the sidelines of a cabinet session on Wednesday in Tehran.
“Oil output would reach 4.2 million bpd by the end of the current Iranian year to March 2008.“
Early production of 25,000 bpd from Azadegan oilfield, the largest field found in Iran in the past three decades, would begin soon, the minister concluded.
According to earlier reports, Azadegan, located 80 km west of Ahvaz in southern Khuzestan province, will start production from February 12.
It has a proven reserve of 33 billion barrels of oil and this could rise to 40 billion barrels, according to the estimate.
The field was to have been developed by a Japanese firm but talks collapsed in 2006. Japan’s INPEX Holdings Inc. had been due to develop the field but talks collapsed, with the Japanese firm citing spiraling investment costs.

An investor at a stock market exchange in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (File photo)

Shares of National Iranian Copper Industries Company (NICIC) will be floated in Malaysian bourse, Head of Privatization Organization said.
“Members of High Council for Transfer (of Shares) held a meeting with the president (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) yesterday morning (Tuesday) during which he authorized the sale of 25 percent of NICIC stocks,“ Gholamreza Heidari Kord-Zangeneh told Fars news agency on Wednesday in Tehran.
The company would be the first Iranian firm whose stocks would be made available in a foreign bourse.
Meanwhile, head of Securities and Stock Exchange Organization Ali Salehabadi briefed the councilors on the results of his trips to Hong Kong and Indonesia.
Salehabadi told reporters late Monday, “The organization overseeing Malaysian bourse had expressed interest in signing a contract with Tehran Stock Exchange outlining the time schedule and procedure for presenting the company’s share in Malaysia stock exchange.
“An invitation has been sent to Malaysian officials to have a meeting in Tehran for finalizing the talks.“
The copper company can ink a deal with a domestic investment firm active in Iran and Malaysia for following up the process.
He stressed that shares offered at the Malaysian bourse cannot be traded in Tehran Stock Exchange.
The giant company is among state firms lined up for privatization in line with Article 44 of the Constitution which seeks privatization of key economic areas and downsizing the government.

Despite economic sanctions against Iran, Brazilian companies are keen on exporting to that country via the United Arab Emirates, the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper reported Tuesday.
“Each time there are sanctions against Iran, there are Brazilian firms that celebrate,“ the Brazilian ambassador to the Emirates, Flavio Sapha, was quoted as saying.
The diplomat declined to say which companies were involved, but told the daily that Brazilian sugar and meats were making their way to Iran. He said his services had also provided visas to Iranian businessmen for trips to Brazil, AFP reported.
According to Estado de Sao Paulo, Brazil-Iran trade amounts to two billion dollars a year.
One Brazilian chicken meat company which was not identified in the report said its biggest client in Iran was the government.
Chairman of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Mine Mohammad Nahavandian warned this week that the western government and the business sector that the US-led policy of discouraging commercial ties with Tehran was likely to backfire.
He said that the West’s reluctance to invest in Iran meant they would lose deals to China, India and Russia.