The Effects of Iran's Reallocating its Oil and Gas Sales Revenues to Developing its Upstream Affairs

Abstract

Oil and Gas sector, with notable participation in national product and funding public expenditures, plays a seminal role in Iran's economy. Although there is a relative lag in providing proportionate supply, Iran stands at the highest rank of owning world's related proven reserves. Using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, this study was aimed to investigate the effects of the increase in the acquisition rate of Iran's oil and gas upstream affairs from oil revenues on GNP and public budget, which are supposed to help the government keep its main obligations often funded from oil revenues. By applying the 18% gain, instead of the current 14.5%, to the oil and gas upstream affairs, short-run recession against long-run booming effects would emerge. Accordingly, maintaining the initial level of either the Public Goods and Services (PGS) output or Government Financial Supports on PGS, GNP could boost up to 5% with over 15% of required contraction in the public budget. On the contrary, maintaining the initial level of either the Transfer Payments or Transfer Payments and Financial Supports on PGS (simultaneously), GNP would rise only 1%, due to the negligible required contraction in the public budget. Therefore, allocating more oil revenues to developing upstream affairs (even under the presence of the contemporary main obligations) is recommended due to its potential to spur notable growth in GNP.