Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

A senior lawmaker said Tuesday that Iran could face a budget deficit of 540 trillion rials (some $44 billion) this year, dismissing previous higher estimates, according to local news agency Mehr.

Earlier, Gholamreza Mesbahi-Moqaddam, the Iranian parliament's economic committee chairman, reportedly said the figure is expected at as much as 740 trillion rials (some $60 billion) in the current calendar year, which began on March 20.

Mesbahi-Moqaddam also said oil incomes have decreased and the country is facing an unfavorable economic condition.

He put the current volume of oil sales at around 1.03 million barrels per day, saying that the figure had been targeted at 2.5 mbpd.

In October, Iran's OPEC governor Mohammad-Ali Khatibi said that the country's oil exports have recently remained steady. He said Iran's oil exports are the same as in the previous months and the situation in the domestic market is stable.

Early this year, the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on Iran's oil and financial sectors with the goal of preventing other countries from purchasing Iranian oil and conducting transactions with the Iranian central bank. The sanctions came into force in early summer 2012.

On October 15, the EU foreign ministers reached an agreement on another round of sanctions against Iran.

The bans have led to a sharp drop over the past year in oil exports, a major source of hard currency earnings and revenues for the government. Iran banned exports of 50 basic goods to preserve essential items as the sanctions bite.

The West is pressing Iran into shutting down its nuclear program on fears that Tehran may eventually develop nuclear weapons.

But Tehran says all of its nuclear research is exclusively for peaceful purposes.