Iran earns more from taxes than oil

Iran

GENEVA, September 28, 2015 – More than half of Iran’s state revenue is coming from taxes over oil for the first time in fifty years.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, in meetings at the second Europe-Iran forum in Geneva, told reporters on Monday that only 10 percent of Iran’s GDP was currently dependent on oil revenues, and a further 20 percent went into a state portfolio. Iran began shifting to a tax-based revenue scheme in the early 1990s, but those changes are only beginning to bring in significant revenue now.

Iran’s economic troubles in part came from the dramatic drop in oil price since 2014 on top of years of EU-US sanctions.

July’s nuclear deal will open Iran and see the sanctions lifted in the next two years. Iran plans to offer close to $100 billion in contracts for 45 oil and gasfields to foreign investors by November.

“We currently produce 3 million barrels of oil a day, of which 1.3 million are exported, but we expect that to increase to 2.3 million in May or June next year,” Iran’s National Oil Company deputy director Ali Kador said to the Guardian.

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