Economy of iran

Religious Foundations. (Negative 1). There are a lot of charitable trust foundations(called “Bunyads” locally in Iran, as a religious agencies, they have control over about 20% of the country’s GDP [7] and channel the revenue to Islamic Republic supporting groups. Important thing to note is that, these organizations are exempted from taxes and receive a lot of subsidies from the government. Therefore, they are considered as a “main weakness of the economy”. Because, with privileges given over other organizations, they are spending the funds improperly, to black market(lucrative) and failing to give charity to the people in poverty, which is originally known as “a mission of Bunyads”. ^[8]
In 1999, Mohammad Rorouzandeh, former minister of defense, reported that more than 80% of Bunyads were in economically unprofitable situation. These companies are also creating unhealthy market environment for other private sector companies which are not equally protected by law and lack monetary incentives from the government. Because, even Iranian accounting laws has no right to audit Bunyads. Their operation coverage can be seen in all sectors of industries, ranging from automobile manufacturing to cotton production farms.
Another problem arises because of those organizations is related to Social Security system of the country. Although they were meant to serve to maintain security and wellness to the population, over 100 organizations operating independently, with no accounting regulations by the Central Bank, can easily cover their “black actions” such as lucrative black market. As a fact, there are 12 million people living in poverty in Iran and no Bunyad organizations financially supported six million of them, which was obviously their responsibility. [9]These all facts mentioned above show that these institutions are wasting a considerable part of the national GDP which would be instead channeled to improving other public sectors, such as healthcare, education, etc.
Global Sanctions against Iran (Negative 2). Obviously, the first and foremost thing that is holding back Iran’s development not only in terms of economy, but in other fields as well, namely education, tourism, etc. As a fact, Iran had been the first country in the world with highest amount of international sanctions until February 2022, when Russia took over its place after the Russia-Ukraine war started.
The first time Iran sanctions by US came out in November 1979 and lasted until 1981. However, they were re-imposed in 1987 ^[10].On top of that, the year of 1995 after amendments, became inclusive of any firms working with Iranian government. The third time was in December of 2006, when United Nations Security demanded Iran to stop its program of uranium enrichment. While initial sanctions covered terms against investments in oil, gas and petrochemicals (exports of the product as well) and business entities working or in any elation with IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), the new sanctions came out to include some more fields. The expansion included transactions of insurance and banking (Central Bank of Iran included), shipping, web-hosting services for commercial endeavors and registration of domain name ^[11].
The list of sanctions by categories are given in the Table 1^[12] below.