The Border between Public and Private Sectors in Iran's Law with Emphasis on Privatization and Outsourcing

From legal perspective, the boundary between public and private sectors and organizations is of great importance. The distinction between private and public sectors affects prominent issues like balancing the territories of market and government, determining the scopes of private and public sector functions, implementation of national accounts and Public Sector Accounting Standards, specifying laws governing the economic activities of public sector organizations and programming the privatization.
In this article legal definitions of public and private sectors and their organizations are criticized, and it is demonstrated that generalization of public accounting act’s definitions to other laws - like enforcement of general policies pertaining to principle 44 of the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran act (a law on privatization) - has resulted in legal complications, misunderstandings and some deviation in privatization and outsourcing processes. Thus, the other mentioned issues like balancing between market and government functions are not the subject of this paper.