Foreign entities eying shares of Iranian companies

Turkey and Russia have requested for buying the shares of Iranian petrochemical companies, Gholamreza Kord-Zanganeh said and added some Arab states favor purchasing the shares of steel companies.

He stated that some 130 trillion rials ($13 billion) worth of state-owned assets have been privatized to date, twice as much as the figure which has been stipulated in the Budget Act.

According to the Fourth Five-Year Economic Development Plan (2005-2010), the IPO affiliated to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance is in charge of setting prices and ceding shares to the general public and on the stock market.

In 2007, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei instructed the governmental officials to speed up implementation of the policies outlined in the amendment of the Article 44 of the Constitution and move towards economic privatization.

The current privatization effort calls for an initial public offering of five percent of the firms being privatized. Once the five percent is public, it will establish a market price which further offerings can be based on. According to a study conducted by the IMF in 18 countries, privatization adds 2 percent to the government’s GDP per annum.

NK/MG

END

MNA