Budget of 134 Trillion Tomans for Strengthening Defense Capabilities; If Funds Are Not Available, Crude Oil Delivery to Legal Entities

The proposed budget bill for the year 1403 indicates that the government intends to allocate 134 trillion tomans to strengthen defense capabilities. Accordingly, the bill emphasizes that 'in the absence of allocation' of this amount, the National Oil Company is obliged to allocate 'monthly equivalent differences' of crude oil or gas condensates to legal entities introduced by the General Staff of the Armed Forces. This level of defense budget comes at a time when an examination of the budgets for other sectors, including those related to job creation and facilitating access to medicine, food, and education, shows a lack of proportionality between the country's real needs and the allocated figures. Experts believe that the Islamic Republic will prioritize strengthening military and security dimensions in the upcoming budget, as it has in recent years. This approach was also followed in the 1402 budget, and in Esfand 1401, the 'Open Data Iran' platform reported that the allocations for 'defense and security matters' had increased by 38.5%. This platform calculated that this figure is 1.4 times the allocations for public education in the 1402 budget. Last year, this platform reported that the budget for the Prison Organization in Iran was three and a half times the total allocations for the five major universities in the country. Observers, relying on this approach in recent years and considering the political and economic relations both inside and outside Iran's borders, believe that strengthening defense and security capabilities is prioritized over developmental and welfare issues for the Islamic Republic. This is a matter that the Iranian society experiences in various aspects of daily life, and daily reports of various protests reflect part of these issues. The government's estimate of the impoverishment of the people; targeted subsidy resources will increase by 15%. Economists say that the result of the retirement age increase bill will be further inflation. The issue of 'increasing the minimum wage for workers' has been removed from the agenda of the Supreme Labor Council meeting. Research report; the budget of the Supreme Council of Islamic Seminaries is 'five times' the subsidies for infant formula and medicine. Education inflation has broken a 12-year record.