Iran surplus oil revenue growing
Khorasan Prov, Aug 9 - The country has earned 2.6 billion dollars in surplus oil revenue in the first four months of the current Iranian year (started March 21), a senior planning expert said here Friday.
Mohammad Sattarifar, head of the Management and Planning Organization (MPO) made the disclosure during a session of the Khorasan provincial planning council.
He said the revenue will be deposited in the country's surplus foreign exchange account if the trend toward increasing oil prices continues.
The official noted that the country's foreign exchange revenue stood at 8.1 billion dollars in the last Iranian year (1381) and that 4.4 billion dollars of this amount went to the production and job creation sectors.
Sattarifar went on to say that the private sector is asking for a five-billion-dollar allocation for various projects from the organization, and that the government has already awarded contracts worth 2.1 billion dollars to various economic sectors.
The MPO head also said that the western province of Kermanshah had received 400 million dollars from the government's special forex account for development of the Assalouye region.
The projects, once operational, are expected to fetch some 10 billion dollars in revenue for the country.
Sattarifar further said that the outlines of the government's fourth economic development plan is now being studied, adding that the plan will not be merely relying on usual credit sources as previous plans did.
http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=185464&n=37CENSORSHIP, TEHRAN-STYLE
Wed Aug 6, 4:06 AM ET
OP Ed New York Post
The world got a rare glimpse of the brutality of Iran's Islamic fundamentalists with the recent savage murder by Iranian security agents of Canadian journalist Zhara Kazemi.
The world got a rare glimpse of the brutality of Iran's Islamic fundamentalists with the recent savage murder by Iranian security agents of Canadian journalist Zhara Kazemi.
In June, the 54-year-old photographer of Iranian descent was arrested and beaten after photographing the regime's nightmarish Evin prison during student-led anti-government protests.
Four days later, she was taken in a coma from an unknown prison to the Ministry of Intelligence and then to a hospital, where she died.
Her relatives say that after her initial roughing up, she was subjected to beatings and torture. Though the judiciary claimed she died of a stroke, the country's vice president later admitted that she had been beaten to death.
Iran's elected, supposedly moderate, government is often at odds with the hard-line mullahs who control the courts, the Council of Guardians, the Revolutionary Guard and other key security forces.
But it was the "moderates" who authorized a hasty burial in Iran, against the wishes of her family and before any outsiders could examine the body.
Kazemi's death coincided with a vicious crackdown against democracy activists, reporters and student leaders. At least 15 other journalists are being held at the jail where she was brutalized, and nine more are imprisoned elsewhere for negative reporting about the regime.
It's not surprising that a regime that sponsors terrorists in Lebanon and suicide bombers in Israel is willing to murder journalists.
But it's something folks here and in Europe who are pushing for warmer ties to Tehran would do well to remember.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=106&ncid=742&e=14&u=/nypost/20030806/cm_nypost/censorshiptehranstyle