Next year's budget has risen by 17 percent compared with the 231,000-trillion-rial outlay for the year to March 2008.

Parliamentarians will begin review of the budget bill for fiscal year 2008-09 as of today. Majlis will meet on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to discuss the report of its Joint Commission on the 2,792-trillion-rial budget.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad submitted the budget bill, the third to be presented by him since assuming office in August 2005, to the parliament on January 7, MNA said.
Rapporteur of the commission, Mohammad Mehdi Mofatteh, will deliver a speech on the report and then lawmakers will vote on generality of the bill.
Once the Majlis approved the general outlines, it will immediately begin discussions on details of the next year’s budget which has increased by 17 percent compared with the 231,000-trillion-rial outlay for the year to March 2008.
Based on the Majlis bylaw, 15 proponents and 15 opponents of the bill will have 20 minutes each to express their views. Following that, representative of the government would defend the bill for 45 minutes.
The parliament is expected to complete its review of the next year’s budget bill by late February.
While submitting the bill, president said that the bill is not encumbered by the myriad notes and paragraphs which rendered the preceding ones virtually incomprehensible and far from transparent.
He criticized the past budgeting system which was based on bargaining by state-run institutions for the highest possible share with scant attention to the actual needs. The number of pages in the budget bill has been slashed to 600 this year from last year’s 2,400.

Iran’s first investment banks will start operating next month as part of Tehran’s strategy of opening new banking channels and also part of its effort to circumvent US restrictions on its financial sector.
The three banks will also play a key role in Iran’s plans to step up aggressively on the privatization of national industries including steel, banking, shipping, airlines and telecommunications, said Heidari Kord-Zangeneh, deputy finance minister and head of the Iran’s Privatization Organization.
“We are going to activate our private sector and our private banks. . . in order to fight against these [US] sanctions,“ Kord-Zangeneh told the Financial Times.
The banks, called Amin, Novin and Pasargad, are run by consortia that include privately-owned investment companies, some of which are affiliated to private banks, he said.
“This is the first time we have had investment banks and they will do what other investment banks all over the world do,“ Kord-Zangeneh said. “They will take share subscriptions and act as an intermediary between the Privatization Organization and the stock exchange, helping us divest our state-owned enterprises.“
Iran’s economy is dominated by the state sector, with economists estimating that four-fifths of the country’s value-added gross domestic product comes from the government, especially from oil.
Iran has for years been trying to sell off parts of state-owned companies not deemed crucial to national security--ruling out the main energy companies. However, progress has been painfully slow, despite entreaties from Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei that privatization is the ’most effective way’ to counteract the ’economic war’ being waged by the West.
Kord-Zangeneh said Iran would accelerate the process of privatization, pledging that his organization would complete the sale of all public companies before the 2015 deadline set out in Iran’s economic plan.
“I promise that if I am here for the next two years, between 80 and 90 percent of the government will be sold,“ he said.
In the short term, Iran will sell a quarter of the National Copper Industry Company, one of the largest Iranian businesses, through the Malaysian stock exchange within the next two months, a stake that Kord-Zangeneh said would raise much more than its current $1.5 billion book value.
Tehran was also in talks with the bourses in Hong Kong and Jakarta about floating Iranian state companies there, he said.

Indian companies Hinduja Group and ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL) hope to reach a general agreement with Iran for developing oil and gas fields in that country by the end of this month.
OVL, the overseas investment arm of ONGC, and the Hinduja Group are looking at joining the development of the South Pars phase XII gas fields and the Azadegan oil field in Iran. In return, Iran has been offered stake in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal and refinery project in India.
“Draft memorandum of understanding has already been exchanged and we are hopeful of reaching a general agreement and initiate a due diligence of the fields during the next round of talks expected by the end of this month,“ Subir Raha, executive vice chairman, Hinduja Group India, told Business Line.
The tripartite talks are expected to take place in Iran. The total project cost involving upstream (fields in Iran) and downstream (LNG and refinery project in India) segment is roughly $20 billion.
In recent talks held in New Delhi between senior executives from OVL and Hindujas’ Ashok Leyland Project Services, and representatives of Iran’s state-run Petropars and Naft Iran Intertrade Co. Ltd (NICO), a subsidiary of National Iranian Oil Co., the vital issue of cost has been sorted out. “Sharing of development cost is a critical component of such deals, and since the methodology for this has been agreed upon, the other issues will follow,“ he said.
The two Indian partners will be working on the equity structure, once the deal is finalized, he said. The Indian partners have offered the Iranian firm an equity stake in its proposed refinery and a LNG gas terminal in Kakinada. ONGC plans to build a 300,000 barrels-a-day refinery in Andhra Pradesh and a 7.5 million ton LNG terminal in Karnataka. The Hindujas are keen to participate with ONGC in this project.

Shares of four companies will be floated in the stock exchange soon.
Announcing this, managing director of Tehran Stock Exchange, Ali Rahmani, said that shares of Isfahan Refinery, Alborz Insurance Company, Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line and Abyek Cement Factory will be presented in the bourse by March 2008.
“With the sale of shares of Isfahan Refinery and Alborz Insurance Company and materialization of profits of the companies in the third quarter, the value of capital market would reach $60 billion,“ he predicted, according to ISNA on Monday.
Asked about shares of Mellat Bank, the official explained that that depends on whether financial balance of the bank, Iran’s third largest state-owned bank, will be prepared on schedule.
“The most important obstacle facing transfer of shares of banks is their commitments towards retirement of their staff.“
Meanwhile, Privatization Organization reported that stocks of Mobarakeh Steel Complex and Iran Aluminum Company (Iralco) will be floated in Tehran Stock Exchange soon, IRNA reported on Monday.
Some 20 percent of shares of the steel giant will be offered in four blocks in the bourse on February 13, 16, 17 and 18. Each share will be sold at base price of 3,900 rials.
Some 40 percent of Iralco stocks will be put on sale in one block on February 19. The buyer(s) should pay 20 percent of the shares, each of them priced at 14,360 rials, in cash.

A seawater desalination plant

Ministry of Agricultural Jihad plans to hold an international conference on water desalination, aimed at development in the nation’s coastal areas.
The decisive role of sea water desalination in development of coastal areas is the initiative behind the upcoming conference, a fax released by the Engineering Research Institute of the ministry said Sunday.
The two-day conference arranged by the institute, is sponsored by 10 research and executive organizations. Modern desalination technologies will be high on the agenda of the conference, the report said.
The International Conference on Sea Water Desalination will be held at Tehran’s Olympics Hotel on Feb. 16-17. Further information on the upcoming event is given at the following website: http://www.eri.ac.ir/swd>
Desalination refers to any of several processes that remove excess salt and other minerals from water.
Water is desalinated in order to be converted to fresh water suitable for animal consumption or irrigation, or, if almost all of the salt is removed, for human consumption.
Sometimes the process produces table salt as a by-product. It is used on many ships and submarines. Most of the modern interest in desalination is focused on developing cost-effective ways of providing fresh water for human use in regions where the availability of water is limited.

China has said it was ready to join Pakistan and Iran in their gas pipeline project if India did not, sources told Daily Times on Sunday.
Pakistan plans to import 2.2 billion cubic feet of gas a day from Iran under the (IPI) project, and has said it was willing to consume an additional 1.05 billion cubic feet if India did not join the project.
Sources said that China had told Pakistan it was interested in importing the additional gas if India did not join in. They said Iran had no objection to exporting gas to China.
In case China joined the project, the pipeline might pass through Gilgit, they said, where Pakistan has already approved a project to widen the Karakoram Highway. Pakistan also plans to extend a railway track to China to connect it to Gwadar port. Chinese experts would visit Pakistan to finalize the route of the pipeline if it joined the project, they said.
Pakistan had invited India to negotiate the fee on February 7 and 8 but India said it would talk to an elected Pakistani government after the February 18 elections.
Iran and Pakistan may sign the agreement on February 24, a date proposed by Iran, they said.
Pakistan had earlier proposed the agreement be signed on January 25 in Abu Dhabi, but sources said Iran had told Pakistan it would only sign the agreement with an elected Pakistani government.

President of Saffron Export Promotion Fund said Iran’s saffron production has exceeded 200 tons this year.
“Given that the area under saffron cultivation increased by 15 percent in the past two years, production has reached over 200 tons at present, up from last year’s output which was above 184 tons,“ Ali Shariati-Moqaddam told MNA on Monday.
Saffron market has been stable since a month ago and each kilo of the precious spice sold 19 million rials (roughly $2,000) in domestic market.
He predicted that the market would be stable in the coming Iranian year which starts on March 21 given the significant rise in production.
Saffron, the dried orange stamen of the crocus flower, has a rich history in Iran as it is widely used in Persian cuisine, particularly rice and sweets.
The delicate flowers of saffron are harvested only in mid-autumn.
Saffron flowers begin to grow after the first rain and the blooming period is usually in mid-October.
Although Iran produces the top-quality saffron, poor packaging and improper export policies have led to the market being dominated by other countries.