Iran will delay for another month a plan to ration the sale of subsidised gasoline in the oil-rich country, a lawmaker was quoted as saying on Tuesday after meeting a senior Oil Ministry official.
Iran imports 40 percent of the fuel it consumes, making it possibly vulnerable if further sanctions were imposed by world powers in their spat with Tehran over Iran's nuclear programme.
"With the agreement of parliament the implementation of the rationing law has been delayed until the beginning of Mordad (the Iranian month starting on July 23)," MP Naser Soudani, a member of parliament's energy commission, told the Oil Ministry's Web site SHANA. Despite big energy reserves, Iran lacks refining capacity to meet domestic fuel demand, which analysts say is rising at about 10 percent a year. Heavy subsidies which drain state coffers make fuel so cheap it encourages waste, analysts say.
Seeking to rein in demand, Iran on May 22 raised the gasoline price by 25 percent to 1,000 rials (around 11 US cents) per litre, still among the cheapest in the world, but it delayed until June a scheme to also ration the fuel.