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Iran says oil revenues down by half: paper
DUBAI |
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's oil revenues have been cut in half this year compared with last year, a newspaper quoted Iran's economic minister as saying, an admission of how deeply Western sanctions are cutting Tehran's chief source of funds.
U.S. and European Union sanctions are designed to slash oil revenues to starve Tehran of funds that might be channeled into expensive nuclear weapons programs.
Iran denies it is seeking nuclear weapons, saying its atomic program is solely for peaceful purposes.
"Because of the sanctions, revenues collected from the country's oil have dropped by 50 percent," Economic Minister Shamseddin Hosseini was quoted as saying by economic daily Donya-e-Eqtesad.
"By managing our resources and revenues, there will be no problem in paying salaries until the end of this year," he added, referring to Iran's calendar year which ends on March 20, 2013.
Hosseini had made the comments in an interview on state television on Saturday and they were published by the newspaper on Sunday.
Iranian legislators had previously hinted at the country's budget woes as a result of sanctions and officials have said the government should depend less on oil revenues and more on taxation to fill its coffers.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is due to present the 2013-2014 budget to Parliament for approval.
Iranian MP Mohammad Reza Bahonar said in September Iran's oil exports had dived to 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) in July as a result of sanctions, compared with between 2.3 and 2.4 million bpd last year.
In addition to oil embargoes, Iran also faces financial sanctions that make it difficult to repatriate earnings from oil it does manage to sell.
Starting February 6, U.S. law will prevent Iran from bringing home oil export earnings, a measure that will @lock up" a substantial amount of Tehran's funds, U.S. officials have said.
(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati and Zahra Hosseinian; Editing by David Holmes)
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In addition, it has to be a time of great creativity, great innovation, in Iran. They clearly are discovering all kinds of new production methods. It can be a time of full employment, as they are forced to develop their own manufacturing rather than becoming ever more dependent on the West. As opposed to the West where our leaders ships off the jobs to the lowest paid workers of the world, and to hell with our people, to hell with the future. Unfettered capitalism is great! (for the .01 percent and our bought out government).
The West couldn’t do a better job of shooting itself in the foot, if it tried.
Message from the West to the rest of the world: get involved with us at great peril. The road of the blind Almighty Buck is the road to Perdition.
Iranian people are not united on different issues , there are no Political parties in Iran or free press to inform people of different
Political parties and political views helping to promote democracy , Islamic regime has brain washed children since the kindergarten , the Islam unfortuantely has gotten it’s roots in Iran for 1400 years , however almost all Iranian oppose this Psychopath Islamic regime , but they have no more energy to over topple this regime , they are not united neither organized , people have no guns to fight the armies of regime .
US and UK policies was to keep Iranian people as much as possible a way from having freedom of political views ( remember the Mosadegh erra , when he was out casted by the US and UK conspiracy with the late Shah of Iran and he was kicked out by a coup d’etat ? ) , this is to say that Western Imperialisme seeks IT’S OWN PROFIT by doing all they can to keep people of the third world as back ward as possible while in the back ground making secret deals with these blood sucker third world regimes , as they did with Sadam Houssein and enouraged him to attack Iran , the result was at least 1 milion death and many handicapped .
Now these sanctions can not do any good to the poor and betrayed people of Iran , betrayed by both sides , the Western Blood Sucker Imperialisme seeking Oil and Gas in our land and the other hand the betryal of the Islamic regime murdering , and torturing Iranian people .
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