Confused coil of budget and schedule
According to the report of Iran Economist, according to the internal regulations of the parliament, the government must present the annual budget to the parliament by December 15, which happened late this year, and the government sent the budget of Bill 1402 to the parliament a few days ago. On the other hand, despite the one-year extension, the deadline for the implementation of the 6th plan law will expire at the end of this year. This means that the 7th plan law should be implemented in the country from the beginning of next year, but the government has not yet submitted the 7th plan bill to the parliament.
In a situation where there are less than three months left until the end of the year, the question is what will happen to the seventh plan bills and the 1402 budget; On December 28, i.e., before the budget bill was submitted to the parliament, the Speaker of the Parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, had explained that “the first parliament will review the seventh plan, if we cannot complete the budget by the end of March, the budget of the twelfth may be closed for two months, but all The effort of the government and parliament is to prevent this from happening.”
After the presentation of the budget, the parliament still insisted on its previous opinion, which is to prioritize the review of the budget, until the government will send the budget to the parliament on the evening of Monday, January 5, but the bill has not yet been announced. In this regard, Seyyed Nizam Mousavi, the speaker of the parliament’s presiding committee, told Iran Economist that “the government must first present the seventh plan bill to the parliament, and then the parliament will announce and collect the next year’s budget bill; Based on this, with the decision of the parliament’s presiding committee, the budget bill 1402 will not be announced until the assignment of the seventh program is determined.
Yesterday, Ali Bahadri Jahormi, the spokesperson of the government, regarding the postponement of the budget bill submission process and whether we are seeing stubbornness between the government and the parliament in this regard, said: This year, like every year, the budget formulation process began in April and May, and during the formulation of the budget, general policies The seventh plan was notified to both the government and other authorities in September. The government should have done two actions; One is to adjust the budget of 1402 in accordance with the policies of the 7th plan, and secondly, to start writing the law for the implementation of the policies of the 7th plan from September.
He continued: “The government submitted the budget bill to the parliament and the parliament will proceed on its own path within the framework of its internal regulations.” The process of drafting the development plan started from September after the notification of the general policies in the government and is being followed up and will be submitted to the Islamic Council once it is completed.
In response to the government’s spokesperson, Mohammad Rashidi, a member of the parliament’s presiding committee, said: “Obviously, the budget bill for 1402 should be prepared and reviewed based on the seventh development plan, but unfortunately, the government has not submitted this plan to the parliament so far.” The general policies were announced in September and the government could write the seventh development plan in three months, so even if the government’s opinion was to extend the sixth plan, from the same September, permission to extend the plan should have been obtained from the Supreme Leader in order to If they agreed, the program would be extended.
Rashidi continued: “However, in the past few months, the government has neither obtained the permission to extend the program nor prepared the seventh program to be submitted to the parliament, while the legislature must act according to the law.”
This member of the parliament’s presiding committee also criticized the way the budget bill was presented and said: the budget bill that was sent to the parliament was submitted without legal formalities and without taking into account the tables and was presented late and was not presented on the floor of the parliament. The parliament follows the law, so the next year’s budget should be prepared based on the 7th plan.
In the meantime, a number of members of the parliament raised some warnings in the public meeting yesterday (January 14); Mohammad Ali Mohseni Bandapi, a representative of Nowshahr, said: “More than a month and a half has passed since the president promised to present the bills of the seventh development and budget plan for 1402 to the parliament, and we are still waiting to present these bills.” These two bills should be submitted to the parliament as soon as possible.
Kazem Delkhosh, the representative of the monastery, also stated: “The way it is going, the budget law will be passed by two twelfths or three twelfths, and this is not in the interest of the country; The program bill will come and the renewal can be done within an hour; In addition, the oath will face the country’s budget with many more problems.”
Ali Nikzad, Deputy Speaker of the Parliament, responded to this remark: “The government should have presented the program to the Parliament in June; The general policies of the leadership of Shahrivar month were communicated to the government and the speaker of the Shahrivar month parliament asked the government in a letter to send the program to the parliament according to the notification of the general policies and the government had the time of Shahrivar, Mehr, Aban and Azar to present the program to the parliament. to give Now the issue is that the government should get permission, make a proposal and get the approval of the representatives to extend the program, and then the budget will be announced and the parliament will start the proceedings. The opinion of the Speaker of the Parliament was that according to Article 189, a plan should be given first, so the heads of the forces have discussed and a conclusion is being reached, and soon the issue of the plan and budget will be determined.
Hearings from a number of representatives indicate that the government will present the seventh plan bill to the parliament by the end of January; There is a possibility that the parliament will simultaneously form two commissions to consolidate the budget and the program, and first complete the review of the program and postpone the consideration of the budget to next year; This issue was confirmed by Behrouz Mohebi Najmabadi, a member of the Program and Budget Commission, in an interview with Iran Economist TV.
Mohebi Najmabadi explained that the budget bill should be drafted within the framework of the 7th plan, and said: More than 12 committees have been formed in the Planning and Budget Organization to draft the 7th plan bill and they are preparing the plan. The government has also announced that it will present the 7th plan bill to the parliament in the next one or two weeks, that is, by the end of December at the latest.
He continued: With the submission of the seventh plan bill, the parliament can deal with the budget within its framework; In this regard, these two bills may be reviewed in the parliament in parallel and the budget will be considered within the framework of the program. In the end, we have to wait for the decision of the parliament.
It seems that in the end, the assignment of the 1402 budget and the 7th development plan will depend on the consensus of the parliament and the government.