President Hassan Rouhani’s economic strategy of significantly reducing Tehran’s dependency on oil starts to bear fruit

The Iranian government is earning more from tax than oil for the first time in almost half a century as the country shifts its traditional reliance on crude to taxation revenues in the face of plummeting oil prices.

President Hassan Rouhani’s economic strategy is to significantly reduce the government’s dependency on oil and instead collect tax more systematically, according to Ali Kardor, the deputy managing director of the national Iranian oil company (NIOC).

“For the first time in 50 years, the government’s share of the oil revenue is less than what it is earning from tax, including VAT,” he told the Guardian on the sidelines of the second Europe-Iran forum in Geneva. “Only around 10% of Iran’s GDP is currently dependent on oil.” Almost 20% of oil income goes into a sovereign wealth fund, which is reserved for development purposes.

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