TEHRAN- Before the process of preparing the country’s Seventh Five-Year National Development Plan (2022-2026) is started, Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA) calls for reforming the planning structures and frameworks governing the plan.

The private sector expects the Seventh Development Plan to be formulated in a trend differently from the previous ones.

The chamber worries about the continuation of the negative growth of investment, the negative growth of per capita income, the shrinking of Iran's share of the global economic system, and the continuation of stagflation.

Ali Shams Ardakani, ICCIMA’s chairman of the Macroeconomics Committee, together with Mohammad Qasemi, the chairman of the Research Center of the chamber, while explaining the results of the joint activities in the past three months on the Seventh Development Plan, announced that a report on "Strategic Needs of the Seventh Development Plan" has been prepared by the ICCIMA’s committees and Research Center.

In an interview with the ICCIMA news portal, Qasemi announced the preparation of a report on "Strategic Needs of the Seventh Development Plan" and said: "For this purpose, a series of meetings have been held with the participation of several other commissions and the views of experts in the field of planning have been used."

Qasemi mentioned the following issues as some major points mentioned in the report.

- If the seventh program is a continuation of previous programs, it is better not to write it.

- The government no longer has the resources to invest, the private sector must come to act.

- The Seventh Development Plan should be based on productivity promotion.

- The current limited resources should be allocated to modifying key challenges.

Shams Ardakani, for his part, mentioned the following points.

- The implementation of the development plan is subject to the adoption of development policies in the annual budget.

- The budgeting process should move toward a development-oriented budget.

- Transparency of laws paves the way for development.

MA/MA