9. Privatization of Iranian State-Owned Enterprises: Barriers and Policy Recommendations

The Iranian government faces two significant challenges in the last decades, namely high current budget spending and low export income due to international sanctions. Low productivity of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and low transparency of budget spending are among the major causes of the high budget deficit. Although Iran started privatization of the public companies a few years back, privatization has not achieved the pre-determined goals so far. This chapter has tried to review the possibility of privatizing the SOEs in Iran as the enterprises are vital in managing the country in the mid-term and long-term. Also, we discuss the process of privatization in Iran, its challenges, and possible solutions. In this regard, we have reviewed the experiences of the first wave of privatization in Iran and provided possible approaches to increase the chance of successful privatization of the SOEs and their productivity in the form of policy recommendations.