TEHRAN -- The head of the Plan and Budget Organization said Tuesday the Iranian administration will not wait for the Vienna negotiations to revive the economy which is being geared up for a growth rate of 8%.
Masoud Mirkazemi said during a meeting with Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian that Iran’s state budget for the fiscal Persian year of 1401, which starts on March 20, 2022, has been devised with the provision of sanctions being in place.
“The 1401 budget bill has been drafted on the assumption that the sanctions would continue. From the beginning, the government has said it has a plan for the economy and will not tie the people’s livelihood to the negotiations,” he said.
Vice President for parliamentary affairs Muhammad Husseini went even further, saying Iran “will not tie” solving its problems to membership in the Paris-based Financial Action Taskforce (FATF).
The former government staunchly advocated joining the FATF, arguing that it could ease foreign trade with Europe and Asia and offset US sanctions. Opponents say passing legislation to join the FATF could expose Iran to even more coercive measures.
The FATF is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 by the West to purportedly combat money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.
In the past, the U.S. and the Europeans have even tried to link fulfilling their obligations under the nuclear deal to Iran’s enactment of FATF standards, prompting the Islamic Republic’s vehement rejection.
The new administration has set economic growth, stagnating around zero in recent years, as a priority. Its main goal, officials have said, is to control inflation and achieve an economic growth rate of 8%.
Mirkazemi sees economic recovery on the way given that the country is emerging from the stagnation under the previous government and the COVID-19 impact.
“Based on our land use planning and domestic capacities, the goal of achieving an economic growth of 8% is feasible,” Mirkazemi wrote on his twitter page Monday.
“We will not keep the country waiting for the negotiations,” he said, referring to the talks that resumed in Vienna Monday to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal and remove all sanctions imposed on the country under former U.S. president Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden has signaled that he wants to rejoin the deal, but he has shown a bizarre interest in having the key elements of Washington’s most draconian sanctions regime ever intact.
“Despite the formation of a new government in the United States, not only have the illegal and unilateral sanctions remained in place, but the policy of imposing sanctions on Iran has continued to exist,” Amir-Abdollahian said Monday.
A delegation appointed by the new Iranian president is joining the negotiations for the first time. Iran has called for the U.S. to unfreeze $10 billion in assets as an initial goodwill gesture.
Diplomats have said Washington has suggested negotiating an open-ended interim accord with Tehran as long as a permanent deal is not achieved. Iranian officials have made it clear that Tehran has no intention of accepting an interim deal.
“The United States still fails to properly understand the fact that there is no way to return to the deal without a verifiable and effective lifting of all sanctions,” Amir-Abdollahian said in a statement shortly after the talks resumed.
The former Iranian administration exhausted all its diplomatic assets on the nuclear deal which miserably failed to profit the country’s economy. The new government is entering the talks with open eyes, having reiterated that it would not tie Iran’s economy to the results of the negotiations.
According to the World Bank’s Macro Poverty Outlook (MPO) report for spring 2021, the Iranian economy is projected to grow by 2.1 percent in the current fiscal year of March 2021-March 2022.
Iran’s gross domestic product (GDP) is projected to grow through the 2022 2024 fiscals by 2.2% and 2.3%, respectively.
A strong rebound in mid-2020, the report says, led to a modest economic expansion in 2020/2021 despite an initial COVID-19 induced shock to GDP.
The COVID-19 output loss since February 2020 was less pronounced in Iran than in other countries, according to the report.