In his speech, Dr. Mehdi Pazouki presented his analysis of Iran’s annual budget in two broad divisions namely general budgets and the budget dedicated to public firms, banks, and profit enterprises.

He also examined the budget resources and public expenditures and pinpointed to the relevant policies regarding the implementation of the annual budget for the fiscal year 1399 (2020-2021) in terms of three separate policies namely expenditure credits, expenditure of capital projects, expenditure of financial projects.

Mr. Mohammad Kordbacheh commenced his presentation with an introduction to the reformation plan for the budget structure in relation to the four areas including sustainable revenue, expenditure efficiency, consistency, development, and institutional reformation in budget allocations. He highlighted that the annual budget bill for the fiscal year 1399 (2020-2021) is formulated based on these reformations.

He also mentioned some of the problems of the budget bill formulation including the inconsistency between the political transitions and budget bill periods, absence of a practical plan for developmental programs, inflexibility of the developmental programs, and negligence with regard to transparency. He referred to the performance-based budget planning as one of the strategies for tackling such problems.

Mr. Kordbacheh, also examined Iran’s annual budget for 1399 (2020-2021) from the perspective of payment resources and expenditure and dealt with its main benefits and drawbacks. The framework for the budget reformation as the main support for sustainable and entrepreneurial growth and the implementation procedures for the performance-based the budget bill with reference to a biannual operational program were other issues raised in this presentation. Finally, the measures taken for the establishment of the performance-based budget structure were delineated.