Oil cash revamp: unveiled by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Tehran unveils oil fund revamp
Iran's government wants to set up a new National Development Fund (NDF), to which at least a fifth of the country's oil and gas revenue would be transferred, according to reports.
The news emerged in a report published by the official IRNA news agency, citing the 2010-11 budget.
The proposed fund would help turn Iran's "natural wealth into sustainable and productive assets", IRNA said in a report published late on Sunday, after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad submitted the budget bill to parliament.
IRNA said the NDF's top priority would be to invest in Iran.
Its board of trustees would include the president, the vice president in charge of planning, the oil minister, the economy minister, the central bank governor and two other ministers picked by the president, a Reuters report said.
Making clear the NDF would replace the existing Oil Stabilisation Fund (OSF), IRNA said the OSF's assets and legal commitments would be transferred to the new fund.
The OSF, set up in 2000, is a contingency fund set aside by the government to cushion the economy against fluctuating international oil prices and help both the public and private sectors with their hard currency needs by extending loans.
The OSF forms part of the Islamic Republic's foreign exchange reserves, but its size and the overall foreign exchange reserves are not regularly revealed to the public.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in December 2008 that the OSF was worth the equivalent of over $23 billion.
The government needs parliament's permission to draw funds from the OSF. The IRNA report did not make clear whether this would also be the case with the planned new development fund.
Ahmadinejad said on Sunday that the budget for 2010-11 would lessen reliance on oil revenues, a move aimed at making the Islamic state less vulnerable to any Western sanctions.
Critics accuse Ahmadinejad of squandering the windfall oil revenue Iran earned when crude prices soared in the first half of 2008, leaving it more vulnerable now that it faces possible United Nations sanctions over its nuclear work.
The president described the new budget as "transparent, integrated and flexible", but did not offer any overall figures.
The semi-official Mehr news agency said the allocated budget for the next Iranian year was $368 billion.
A senior official said on Sunday the budget for the next Iranian year, which starts on 21 March, was based on an oil price of $60 per barrel, higher than last year's $37.50 per barrel.
The US and its European allies plan to impose further sanctions on Iran after its failure to meet a 31 December US deadline for accepting a UN-brokered proposal to send its uranium abroad for processing.
The West claims Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of its civilian atomic programme. Iran denies this, saying it needs the technology to generate power.