It reiterated that pilgrims require a Haj visa and it can be obtained through recognised official channels
"From this morning the sale of five percent of the shares of Iran's telecommunications company started," Davoud Zareian, head of public relations at Iran Telecommunication Company (ITC), was reported as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
Iran is selling 2.293 billion shares in the company, IRNA said. The offer price had yet to be determined and would depend on demand for the stock, Iran state television reported earlier.
Past sales of state assets have drawn limited interest from the private sector. The sale of the minority stake in ITC leaves state control intact, giving no mandate for the kind of restructuring private investors would like to see, analysts say.
"The sale of these shares is a symbolic act and not real privatisation," analyst Saeed Leylaz told Reuters on Saturday.
The Islamic state tried to shake up its lumbering economy in 2004 by overturning an article in the constitution which decreed core infrastructure should remain state-run.
Iran has been seeking to sell off many state firms, though not in the upstream oil and gas industry. Progress has been slow.
The ITC offering has been delayed for months. ITC provides all of Iran's landlines. It competes in the mobile service sector with MTN Group MTNJ.J, sub-Saharan Africa's biggest mobile telephone operator.
Foreign investment in Iran has slowed as the United Nations has slapped three rounds of sanctions on Iran since 2006 for refusing to halt sensitive nuclear work which the West believes is aimed at building atomic bombs. Tehran says its nuclear activities are peaceful and aimed at generating electricity.
It reiterated that pilgrims require a Haj visa and it can be obtained through recognised official channels
The 18-year-old was taken to hospital in a serious condition
The brothers, who say they are innocent, are accused of having formed an organised criminal network in early 2021 in Romania, as well as in the US and Britain
The left-handed batter scored 3369 runs in 136 one-day internationals and 2893 in 140 Twenty20 internationals — both Pakistan records
Food supplies were distributed to 80 households
On January 31, a heart was airlifted from Delhi to Chennai, paving the way for Ayesha Rashid's life-saving surgery
The online retailer, which is headquartered in Singapore, has said it has around 108 million monthly active users in the 27-nation EU
The baby girl named Rouh, meaning Soul, suffered respiratory problems and a weak immune system, a doctor at the Emirati Hospital in Rafah said