“The executors of privatization in Iran did not act maturely,” Abbas Sheri-Moqaddam said.

He drew a parallel between the privatization of Iran’s petrochemical sector and agrarian reforms conducted before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“The petrochemical industry was cut into pieces and awarded to a group of individuals who only sought higher profits in the short-term,” he said.

Sheri-Moqaddam said petrochemical products have earned the country more than 20 billion dollars a year over the past three years, adding that four billion dollars of these revenues were distributed between stockholders of petrochemical companies.

He said Iran used to gain tens of billions of dollars from petrochemical products when Mohammad-Reza Nematzadeh, currently minister of industry, trade and mine, was serving as NPC chief.