Iran to open $15bn worth of infrastructure projects in new calendar year
The Iranian government is planning to spend more than $15 billion on unfinished infrastructure projects in the new Persian calendar year which started late March.
Head of the Plan and Budget Organization of Iran said on Wednesday that the spending would enable the government to finish more than $15 billion worth of construction projects during the year that ends in late March 2021.
Mohammad Baqer Nobakht said that a bulk of spending would take place in the first quarter of the year ending late June, allowing the government to accelerate the completion of the projects across the country.
Nobakht, a deputy president, said that the government had earmarked around $3 billion to civil construction projects in the first quarter of the previous calendar year, saying the appropriation as unprecedented in history.
Spending on massive infrastructure projects come as the Iranian government is struggling with strained finances both as a result of the American sanctions, which have specifically targeted the country’s sale of oil, and because of growing threats of a coronavirus pandemic which has affected tens of thousands of people in the country.
The government has indicated that sanctions and other economic problems should not cause a halt to infrastructure development, especially for those projects deemed as critical to the diversification of the economy away from oil.
Some key road and rail projects were opened across Iran over the winter, including a costly section of a highway connecting the capital Tehran to the costs of the Caspian Sea in the north.
Another project was a key railway link that was opened in December in northwest of the country to boost international transportation through Iran’s rail corridors.
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