<p dir="LTR"><span>Financial Tribune – Some 4,200 state-owned companies’ bank accounts have been transferred to the Central Bank of Iran since March 6, 2017, when President Hassan Rouhani issued the landmark directive aimed at enhancing the transparency of government finances and public entities’ expenditures.</span></p> <p dir="LTR"><span> “By the end of the previous Iranian year to March 20, 2017, about 2,400 government [companies’] bank accounts had been moved to CBI while the figure reached 4,200 in the past six months,” Masoud Rahimi, the director of CBI’s Office for Banknote Issuance, was quoted as saying by IRNA.</span></p> <p dir="LTR"><span>According to Rahimi, the Fifth Five-Year Development Plan (2011-16) had mandated the government to move all of its bank accounts to CBI.</span></p> <p dir="LTR"><span>He added that moving this number of accounts during this period indicates that the account-moving process has been more successful than in the past five years.</span></p> <p dir="LTR"><span>The government’s decision to move its accounts from agent banks to CBI was announced on August 2016, in line with its policies to promote transparency and avoid dodgy practices related to expenditure. </span></p>