NCRI Staff
NCRI – The spokesman for the 2018 budget consolidation commission in the Iranian regime’s parliament announced the agreement of Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of the regime, with a $4 billion withdrawal from the National Development Fund (NDF) in the next year’s budget.
According to the state-run ISNA news agency, Ali Asghar Yousef-Nejad said: “Based on the permission of the leadership and the commission’s approval, the following is agreed to withdraw from the National Development Fund in 1997.”
Accordingly, $2.5 billion of funds (63% of the total fund) withdrawn from the National Development Fund will be spent on military activities of the regime next year.
The amount withdrawn for Iran’s military programs is more than 16 times the amount spent on countering the dust particles and dirt.
The 2018 military budget presented by the government of Hassan Rouhani to the parliament under review is about 44 thousand billion Toman, equivalent to $10 billion.
The spokesman for Rouhani’s government has previously announced that the budget for defense and security sector in 2017 was about 40 trillion Toman, saying the budget had increased by 128% over a four-year period.
Some experts believe that the profits of the Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Defense are not included in the regime’s military budget, and by calculating these figures, the military budget will increase further.
The National Development Fund of Iran replaced Currency Reserve Fund during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency. Shortage of currency resources is one of the serious problems of the Iranian regime.
It is said that the most withdrawn from the National Development Fund occurred during Ahmadinejad, while the government had the most oil revenue during this period.
A similar example:
Norway also has a reserve fund similar to Iran’s National Development Fund. The National Independence Fund in Norway is a huge investment with over $1,000 billion in funding. The fund is not only a huge national investment account, but also the largest independent pension fund in the world, derived from the proceeds from its oil sales.
In the 1990s, the Norwegian government approved that part of the fund’s account balance should be maintained for generations to come. Financial resources of the fund with one thousand billion dollars are so great that if the money is divided among about 5.3 million Norwegian citizens, each one would receive close to 189 thousand dollars.