چكيده لاتين
The present research seeks to explain and examine the nature, functions, and structure of state funds from a legal perspective. Previous researches on government funds have only examined and analyzed specific issues related to some examples of funds, while this article has attempted to discuss various issues of funds comprehensively. State funds are governmental institutions with a history of about 40 years that can play an important and influential role in various fields and social issues. Alongside them, there are also state-owned companies, which are about 100 years old and are typically established and managed as private joint-stock companies. These companies may either be fully state-owned or have at least more than 50 percent of their shares controlled by the government. Since both state funds and state-owned companies operate in parallel and engage in essential and fundamental activities, each playing a vital role in advancing the country’s development goals, this research—besides exploring different aspects of state funds—also compares them with state-owned companies from various dimensions. In general, one of the main distinctions between these two types of governmental institutions lies in their objectives and visions. State-owned companies are primarily established to serve the government’s commercial purposes and to generate profit—in other words, they act as instruments of the state’s entrepreneurial or business activities. In contrast, state funds pursue different aims and are fundamentally created to provide support, welfare services, or solutions to major national problems. Therefore, it can be argued that state funds mainly pursue non-profit purposes. There are other fundamental differences between state funds and state-owned companies, including differences in structure, financial resources, amount of dedicated budget, management method, scope of activities, etc, which will be discussed in detail. This paper, which employs a descriptive-analytical method and draws upon reliable library sources, attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of state funds in terms of their establishment, structure, capital and financial resources, and finally, their dissolution and termination of activities, in order to clarify existing ambiguities surrounding the understanding of these governmental institutions. The findings suggest that, despite some progress made regarding the functioning of state funds, currently in our country, these funds and also state-owned companies face numerous challenges and problems in various fields such as financial resources, management, etc. Achieving a desirable state of efficiency and effectiveness thus requires the implementation of necessary reforms through revisions of some of the statutes of funds and companies as well as the enactment of comprehensive and codified laws and regulations regarding these companies and institutions.
