Parliament Approves the General Outline of the 2016 Budget Bill

The Islamic Consultative Assembly approved the general outline of the 2016 budget bill. According to Iranian news agencies on Sunday (April 22), the budget bill for the current year was approved with 135 votes in favor, 37 against, and six abstentions. The total number of votes cast for the approval of this bill was reported to be 200. The proposed government budget for the current solar year is 952 trillion tomans, which represents an increase of more than 12 percent compared to the previous year. The general outline of the 2016 budget bill was supposed to be approved before the start of the new year, but it was delayed because the government did not fully present the 2016 budget to the parliament. The Islamic Consultative Assembly had previously approved a two-twelfths budget for the first two months of the current year. Two-twelfths budgets are typically approved in emergency situations, such as when governments are uncertain about receiving expected revenues on time. Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, head of the Management and Planning Organization, stated that the delay in presenting this bill was due to the uncertainty regarding the implementation of the nuclear agreement and budget sources, including oil revenues that were under sanctions. According to news agencies, Mohammad Reza Pourabrahimi, spokesman for the Joint Commission of the Parliament, announced that this commission had made changes to the government’s proposed bill. Among these changes is the addition of 25 trillion tomans to the government’s resource ceiling and 5 trillion tomans to the country’s defense budget. Supporters of the general outline of the budget bill considered transparency, attention to national production, job creation, and housing as positive features of the budget bill. In contrast, opponents pointed to the inconsistency of the proposed bill with 'resistance economy.' The Research Center of the Parliament had previously stated that although three-quarters of this year's budget was a repetition of last year's bill, it had fewer issues compared to before. The details of the 2016 budget must also be approved by the Parliament before the end of May of the current year.