officially supposed to have started last Thursday, but so far there has been no sign of any change.
Economy Minister Shams-eddin Hossaini announced October 2 that the long awaited shift would begin October 7.
Subsidies on fuel and many goods are to be eliminated over five years while the public will receive cash welfare payments—larger sums going to the poorest and smaller sums to the richer—to make up for the loss of subsidies.
But no prices are reported to have gone up since October 7, and citizens have not yet reported receiving any welfare check deposits in their bank accounts.
The government has refused to say what formula it will use to make welfare payments. Hossaini said people would find out what they would receive when they got their first payment in their bank accounts. But without an announcement of the formula being used, no citizen would know whether the amount he received was the correct sum.
The Majlis National Security Committee Sunday wrote President Ahmadi-nejad asking him to lay out the details of the new system clearly for the public.
The committee based its call on an alleged threat, rather than the public’s right to know.
Another deputy, Emad Hossaini, said that several members of the Majlis are calling for the shift away from subsidies to be delayed until the public’s wasteful consumption of fuel and other subsidized goods can be “corrected,” he said.
It is broadly agreed that the cheap prices of gasoline, electricity, water and other items has led to consumption levels far higher than the norm in other countries. But the usual argument is that such wasteful Iranian consumption patterns will change automatically once the prices of such goods rise substantially to approach world price levels.
