A Member of Parliament: 70 Percent of the Annual Budget is Approved Without Representatives' Vote

The Vice President of the Social Commission of the Islamic Consultative Assembly states that only "one third" of the national budget is reviewed in the parliament, and the representatives of the people "do not have the opportunity to vote on 70 percent of the budget." Mohammad Reza Badamchi shared this information on his personal Twitter account, announcing the end of the review of the 1397 budget bill and its submission to the Guardian Council. He wrote that "public opinion should know that only one-third of the total budget of the country is reviewed in parliament, which is merely limited to the government's public resources and expenditures." This representative did not provide an explanation about the institution or institutions that decide on the other two-thirds of the country's budget, adding that "in other words, the representatives of the people do not have the opportunity to vote on 70 percent of the budget, which mainly includes the resources and expenditures of large state-owned companies, government-affiliated profit-making institutions, and banks." He called for a "100 percent" review of Iran's budget in parliament and added that "some sectors benefiting from government budgets are out of sight of oversight institutions, including parliament, and therefore act non-transparently." Badamchi added that he and "a few of his colleagues" are calling for a comprehensive review of all resources and expenditures of the country. The head of the Labor Faction of the Islamic Consultative Assembly did not mention the names of these sectors. Hassan Rouhani, the President of Iran, presented the 1397 budget bill to the Iranian parliament on December 10, describing it as different from previous budgets and a manifestation of his electoral promises. On January 1, he also stated in a meeting with the heads of parliamentary commissions that "in total, nearly 200 trillion tomans out of 360 trillion tomans are lost due to issues beyond the government's control." The President added that "60 trillion tomans are allocated for pension funds and more than 40 trillion tomans for cash subsidies. 60 trillion tomans are also allocated to the National Development Fund, and 10 to 11 trillion tomans are given as retirement bonuses. Additionally, subsidies are provided for agricultural development." Furthermore, the review of the 1397 budget shows that the share of religious, military, and security institutions that are not accountable to the government has increased in the next year's budget. The budget for military and security institutions in the next year's budget bill is nearly 50 trillion tomans, most of which is under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Although reports indicate that more than 2 trillion tomans are allocated to religious seminaries in various sectors of the 1397 budget, some clerics, including Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday Prayer Imam of Mashhad, and Kazem Sedighi, the Friday Prayer Imam of Tehran, have called for an increase in the budget for religious seminaries. Following the details of the 1397 budget being revealed, campaigns have also formed in cyberspace under the title "Changing the Budget in Favor of the People," and some participants in these campaigns have called for a reduction in the budgets of religious seminaries, state media, and military institutions. Rouhani also responded to these criticisms on December 19, stating: "It is the right of the people to compare. They say, 'You allocated this much money to this cultural institution.' They protest and ask why it is so much." He added that "there was a long list of 17 different institutions that only took money from us; we would give them money at the beginning of the year, and if it was delayed even for a day, they would protest, asking why the government had not given them their money and why it was late. Then we would ask where they spent this money, and they would say it was none of your business."