Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who promised to bring oil revenues to people's tables in his 2005 presidential campaign, has arranged to bring oil revenues to mosques' tables by authorizing a 600 percent increase in the "budget for religious activities" in next year's fiscal package. Last year, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance had a budget equivalent to 20.111 billion rials for religious activities. The Ahmadinejad Administration has proposed increasing this amount to 150.62 billion rials for the upcoming year, increasing the previous year's budget by exactly 639 percent.
The increase comes despite the fact that mosques have leftover funds from previous years in which they failed to introduce enough programming to spend all of their allocated funds.
The administration has also asked for a 307 percent increase in the budget for "cultural activities in mosques," increasing it from 40.167 billion rials to 170 billion rials for the upcoming fiscal year.
In another section of the budget, the administration increased funds for "supporting and directing cultural and religious activities," driving up the number from 90 billion rials last year to 320.825 billion rials for the upcoming year, an increase of 264 percent.
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