With 2 years into Iran’s fourth development plan and the government’s indifference in demonstrating any interest to the plan, a member of Ahmadinejad’s administration announced that the government was busy developing the nation’s fifth development plan based on an Islamic-Iranian model, and that for this purpose it was using religious historic precedent, writings and views.

Ali Asghari, the deputy responsible for economic and coordination of the Planning and Budget Organization told Barname (planning) magazine, “One of the goals of defining the Islamic-Iranian economic development model is to investigate how can the current monetary structure improve its Islamic and development performance in this paradigm. Our focus in this debate on the Islamic-Iranian development model is to see whether we cam be more active at the global level with through this model or nor. In designing the Islamic-Iranian development model religious sources and documents including historic precedents, Quranic verses, narratives and religious views will be used, as they pertain to a systemic view on religion.”

This official further said, “Following the leader’s remarks in the city of Mashhad and in view of his earlier statements regarding the Islamic-Iranian development model, one of the key elements in devising the fifth development plan is the discussion over the Islamic-Iranian development model.”

Asghari added that the deputy for Applied Planning and Supervision of the president’s office ((Moavenate Barnamerizi va Nezarat Rahbordi Reyis Jomhuri) along with the office of Higher Education and Research Institute of the Planning Management office (Moasese Ali Amuzesh va Pajhoohesh Modiriat’e Barnamerizi) has already taken a number of steps to utilize the services of thinkers and researchers in this regard. He further said that these offices had already held serious detailed discussions on the issue with a number of groups at the research institute affiliated to the Theological Centers (Hoze Elmie).

In a related development, a prominent economist Saeed Leylaz editorialized in Sarmaye economic magazine (Capital) that in the government’s presentation of its performance of the fourth development plan, it has not provided any documentation or sources for its planning of the next (fifth) development plan. He concluded that the economic and scientific basis for the fifth development plan was therefore unclear. Furthermore, so long as huge oil revenues kept coming into the coffers, petro-Dollars would provide the means to the players not to be bothered with the economic and planning shortcomings, and mismanagement of economic plans, by addressing the problems through the greater injection of money into budgets and expenditures, thus not be bound by the economic development plan, and even change it altogether.