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Does Rouhani want to scrap Iran’s 5-year development plans?

With the government’s sixth Five-Year Development Plan mired in controversy and yet to be approved after nine months, some Iranian economists now say these plans are a thing of the past.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks at a news conference near the United Nations General Assembly in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S., September 22, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson  - RTSP0SP

TEHRAN, Iran — Two weeks after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ordered government bodies to prepare their annual budget plans for the fiscal year starting March 21, 2017, senior member of parliament Gholam Reza Kateb urged the Cabinet to submit the national budget bill before the Dec. 5 deadline so that lawmakers will have enough time to review it, the Young Journalists Club reported Oct. 9.

Kateb, a member of the parliament’s presiding board, also urged the Rouhani administration to consider the generalities of the sixth Five-Year Development Plan while preparing the budget bill. His comments came as parliament itself has now been sitting on the development plan, which was proposed by the Management and Planning Organization, for about nine months. Indeed, lawmakers only approved the plan's generalities as late as Oct. 2 — eight days after Rouhani ordered government bodies to prepare their budgets for the coming fiscal year.

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