Heidari Kord Zangeneh, head of the IPO, announced that the privatisation organisation had sold $15bn worth of state assets.

However, Rabin Rabii, managing director of the Tehran-based Turquoise Partners investment fund says: “The government has sold between $3bn and $3.5bn.”

The difference between the two sums, he says, is accounted for by the government's practice of issuing free 'justice shares' to poor Iranian families. “The government gave out some shares to the poor and needy,” says Rabii. “If you do not take those shares into account, the actual privatisation was short of what the government had planned, but it was still significantly up compared with previous years.”

The Economic Ministry says 15 million of Iran's 23 million rural population will receive “justice shares” by the end of the Iranian year in March.

These shares cannot be sold for two years. The government recovers the capital value of the shares by taking a share of the dividends over 20 years.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei launched the privatisation programme in July 2006 when he said that all but 50 of the 1,500 enterprises owned by the Iranian government should be sold by March 2010

Among the major sell-offs over the past year, the privatisation organisation has sold 20 per cent of Mobarakeh Steel and National Iranian Copper Industries Company.

The two companies are now the largest stocks on the Tehran Stock Exchange. Mobarakeh Steel has a market capitalisation of $6bn and National Iranian $4.3bn.

The IPO has approved 240 companies for sale.

Other state-owned enterprises, including Telecommunications Company of Iran, three banks and all but one of the 92 downstream oil and petrochemicals companies have yet to be privatised.

“The reason a lot of them have not been privatised is that they have not met the regulations of the bourse,” says Rabii. “The accounts are not of a good standard.”

Tehran wants to raise $30bn through sell-offs this year.