February 07-2014
The overwhelming bulk of state-owned firms supposedly privatized under the Ahmadi-nejad Administration have just been sold to other government agencies and have never gone to the private sector, the Rohani Administration has announced.
Eshaq Jahangiri, one of President Rohani’s eight deputies, called vice presidents in Iran, announced last month that state-owned assets worth a total of $80 billion were sold under the government’s “privatiz-ation” policy, intended to reduce the role of the state in the economy.
But Jahangiri said only 17 percent of this value was actually turned over to the private sector.
Speaking the same day, Economy Minister Ali Tayeb-nia said that beyond that 17 percent, “the rest of the public assets have been sold to institutions that are not considered as belonging to the private sector.”
It has long been known that government agencies were major buyers of the assets being “privatized,” but this was the first time an official placed an actual percentage on it.
Akbar Ganji, the journalist now living in exile, wrote in The National Interest, “Most of the assets were ‘sold’ to military/security-controlled organs and to the foundations and corporations that are controlled by the Abode of the Supreme Leader,” the vast holding company generally called the Setad.
Last month, the Reuters news agency ran a long series on the Setad and said that those parts of it to which Reuters could attach a valuation came to $95 billion, indicating that Khamenehi controls far more wealth in Iran than the Pahlavi shahs ever did.
