Iran: Parliament Opposes Ahmadinejad’s Cash Payouts
The head of Iranian Parliament says the Ahmadinejad administration is in stark violation of the law by pushing for an increase in cash benefits to households, which he claimed is only triggering further inflation.
The Mehr News Agency reports that parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani referred to the increase in cash benefits today, saying: “Aside from the fact that it is in stark violation of the law, it is not appropriate for the well-being of the country and, rather than halting rising prices, it has exacerbated them.”
The Ahmadinejad administration has cut off government subsidies on energy and food staples in an aim to restructure the system more fairly. For more than a year, it has been paying out cash benefits to Iranian households to allow them to adjust to the sudden rise in prices.
The restructuring plan had been divided in various stages, and in the Iranian New Year, Ahmadinejad had intended to increase the amount of cash benefits paid to families, but Parliament has opposed this move.
Larijani said the increase in cash benefits is triggering further unemployment and has no positive outcome.
He stressed that if the increase in cash benefits to household were part of a “set of decisions”, Parliament might have been able to support it, but on its own, it would only trigger a “storm of inflation like the situation that was caused a few months ago that suddenly reduced people’s wealth.”
Iranian currency slid suddenly against foreign currencies a few months ago, and the rate of exchange for the rial against the dollar has almost been doubled.
