Critical Analysis of The Government Cash Management Process in Iran

Efficient government cash management (collection of revenues, receipts and allocation of expenditures), is one of the most important treasury functions and a critical prerequisite for fiscal discipline of the government. The present study investigates the main processes and procedures of the Treasury cash management in Iran, according to related laws, by-laws and regulations. For this purpose, processes related to inflow and outflow of funds to/from the treasury, is reviewed, classified by type of funds (Public Funds, Private Funds, Funds of State-Owned Companies, oil revenues, and Deposit Trust Funds). Graphs extracted from this study, provide the preliminaries to evaluate the efficacy of Treasury cash management processes. Based on our findings, the main criticisms of the current cash management processes in Iran are: 1- Slow and lagging flow of revenues and expenditures of the public sector, 2- Rent-seeking behavior in banks and government agencies, 3- Inefficient cash payment procedures (based on allocation).
According to other countries' experiences and also the IMF policy recommendations, the first step for the modification of the existing processes of the Treasury liquidity management, is the establishment of Treasury Single Account (TSA) and concentrating all government accounts at the Central Bank, which will increase transparency, effective monitoring and efficiency of government cash resources