Iran pins hopes on OPEC to meet budget forecasts
TEHRAN, March 17 (AFP) - Iran's central bank governor said Wednesday
he expects promised OPEC cutbacks to enable the Islamic republic to meet
its budget forecasts and bring a return to monetary stability.
"Given the present trend in the world oil market there is a great
possibility that figures stipulated in next year's state budget will be
realised and the country's monetary situation will be stabilised,"
Mohsen Nurbakhsh told the official IRNA news agency.
Iran, OPEC's second biggest producer after Saudi Arabia, has been battered
by the plunge in the price of oil, which accounts for 85 percent of its
hard currency earnings.
Nurbakhsh said he expected the decisions of OPEC, which meets in Vienna
on March 23, to set a market price for oil that will realise its figures
in the budget for the next Iranian year starting March 21.
The budget, adopted by parliament in January, projects oil revenues
of 16 billion dollars based on oil prices of 11.8 dollars a barrel.
Nurbakhsh also reiterated figures he announced in February that Iran's
foreign debt was around 23 billion dollars and said the state must repay
three billion dollars in 1999.
In the current year, Iran's exports and imports both reached a total
of 13 billion dollars, he said, without elaborating.
Iran currently produces 3.7 million barrels of oil per day, of which
2.4 million bpd goes for export.
But on Monday, Iran said it would slash oil production in line with
a decision by several key oil-producing countries last week to cut output
by more than two million barrels per day.
The cuts by individual producers were not specified in The Hague, pending
further negotiations with other OPEC and non-OPEC countries ahead of the
cartel's ministerial conference next Tuesday.
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