The Iranian government has taken significant steps towards enhancing economic transparency. A recently release International Monetary Fund (IMF) report assesses Iran’s conditions against its Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency and concludes that particular progress has been made in the budget process.
Since the enactment of Iran’s five-year development program for 2000-2004, authorities have taken a number of steps to enhance fiscal transparency. Important recent actions include eliminating implicit exchange rate subsidies, budgetizing other implicit subsidies including those associated with price controls and adopting contemporary budget classification standards.
The report’s research staff suggests that the Iranian government continue on its path to high transparency by clarifying the financial and management relationships within the enlarged public sector and enhancing the transparency of their options, improving the quality of fiscal information and increasing the availability of fiscal information to the parliament and the public.
The IMF’s Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency maintains that roles and responsibilities in government should be clear, information on government activities should be provided to the public, budget preparation, execution, and reporting should be undertaken in an open manner and fiscal information should attain widely accepted standards of data quality and be subject to independent assurances of integrity.
The Code sets out what governments should do to meet these objectives in terms of principles and practices. These principles and practices are distilled from the IMF's knowledge of fiscal management practices in member countries. The Code will facilitate surveillance of economic policies by country authorities, financial markets, and international institutions. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
