Nicosia, Sept 24: Gholamhossein Nejabat, Managing Director of the National Petrochemical Company (NPC) of Iran, has said that 20 subsidiaries of NPC have been earmarked for privatization.

He added that so far Carbon Iran, Farabi, Abadan, Kharg, Isfahan, Arak, Shiraz, Razi and Polika Karaj have been wholly privatized and that 52 of the 81 subsidiaries of the National Petrochemical Company have been semi-privatized.

Nejabad told journalists that more companies would be privatized if Iran Privatization Organisation approved the transfer of other petrochemical companies as a single block or holding companies.

The question of privatization has become a hotly debated issue in Iran, as there are frequent complaints about the lack of efficiency in the multitude of state-owned companies.

Recently the Head of Iran’s Expediency Council, former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has stressed the need for wide scale privatization in the real sense of the world.

Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani considered proper management as the most important factor for sound economic foundations and added: "There is a wide gap between the private sector and the government in this respect and we need to move towards real privatization and move towards free market economy in Iran."

The head of the Expediency Council has said that the main objective of privatization is taking maximum advantage of the country''s human and material resources, adding, "Providing an appropriate atmosphere for the performance of the private sector would solve two major problems of the country, namely lowering unemployment and inflation." (ANI)