Page 45 - IRANRptJul19

free. The Basij commander, Brigadier General Gholam-Hossein Gheibparvar, reportedly said the militia would start commissioning 5-kilowatt rooftop panels across the country, especially in underdeveloped regions.
“The move comes in a bid to help create sustainable employment in the underdeveloped regions plus increase family income,” he added.
Many regions afflicted by the recent disastrous flooding in Iran were in the remote western part of the country, where regular power was weak at best. Solar power efforts may be focused on villages that had their power infrastructure damaged.
According to the Energy and Energy Efficiency Organisation (SATBA), more than 3,200 rooftop solar power stations are currently operational across Iran, of which 90% have been developed in underprivileged areas.
The latest reported commercial solar power plant to open in Iran was the German ABO Wind facility, inaugurated in the central province of Semnan on September 27 last year.
Iran has signed several agreements with European, Asian and African solar panel firms in recent years. The government offers a 10-year tax break for investors in their sector.
In late May, Pars Reys Energy Bahar (PREB), a subsidiary of French energy firm Hanau Energies Group, announced the completion of an 8.5 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic power plant located 130 kilometres outside of Tehran.
9.1.13 Defence sector news
Big military spending hikes took place in Turkey, Armenia, the Baltics and across Central and Eastern Europe in 2019, while notable expenditure increases also occurred in Bulgaria and Romania, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) . Iran, meanwhile, facing dire economic straits because of the hostility of the Trump administration, saw a clear reduction in the amount it spent on its military.
“The increases in Central and Eastern Europe are largely due to growing perceptions of a threat from Russia,” said Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher with the SIPRI AMEX programme. “This is despite the fact that Russian military spending has fallen for the past two years.”
At $61.4bn, Russian military spending was the sixth highest in the world in 2018, the figures posted in SIPRI's Trends in World Military Spending report showed. Such spending by Moscow decreased by 3.5% compared with 2017. Military spending in Turkey increased by 24% in 2018 to $19.0bn, marking the highest annual percentage increase among the world’s top 15 military spenders, the institute said.
Several countries in Central and Eastern Europe made large increases in their military expenditure in 2018, SIPRI observed.
Countries with the highest relative increases in military spending in 2018 according to the new data included Armenia (up 33%), Bosnia-Herzegovina (26%), Bulgaria (23%), Ukraine, Romania (18%), and Kazakhstan (16%). Armenia's total expenditure, at $609mn, was 4.8% of GDP, taking its military spending burden to among the top 10 in the world, along with Russia at 3.9 percent.
Iran’s military spending fell 9.5% in 2018 to $13.2bn as the country’s economy contracted and its currency collapsed in the face of renewed heavy economic sanctions imposed by the US.
Military expenditure by the US (up 6.4% to $649bn) climbed for the first time since 2010, with the spending equivalent to 3.2% of GDP.
45 IRAN Country Report July 2019 www.intellinews.com