Iran to use 20% of state budget to fight coronavirus

Iran is to allocate 20% of its annual state budget to fighting the coronavirus outbreak in the country, one of the worst-hit in the world, President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday.

Iran’s death toll from coronavirus rose to 2,517 on Saturday, with 139 fatalities in the past 24 hours, as cases rose 3,076 to 35,408, Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said on state television.

“We are in difficult conditions, in conditions of sanctions but we have allocated 20% of our budget this year to corona, ... and this might be surprising for the world from a country under sanctions,” Rouhani said in comments broadcast on state TV.

Rouhani reassured the public that the country had a strong healthcare system able to cope should there be a rapid progression of the disease. The state health insurance would cover 90% of coronavirus-linked costs of patients, he said.

The budget allocation, amounting to about 1,000 trillion rials, would include grants and low-interest loans to those affected by COVID-19, Rouhani said.

The allocated amount is worth some $6.3 billion at the rial’s free market exchange rate of about 160,000 rials per dollar. But the government may decide to allocate some of the funds at the official rate of 42,000 which is used to subsidize food and medicine

On Thursday, Rouhani said the government was seeking approval to withdraw $1 billion from Iran’s sovereign wealth fund for the fight against coronavirus.