President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched a major reshuffle of Iran's budget and planning agency, changing its structure and setting aside personnel who served in the previous reformist government, media have reported.

The press said Ahmadinejad has decreed that the organsation's provincial agencies would no longer be independent entities but would answer to local governors, who themselves answer to the interior ministry.

"The adminstrations of the organisation of planning and budget in the 30 provinces of the country have been reattached to local governorates," Ahmadinejad said in a decree.

The move, which appears aimed at tightening government control over regional planning, came after the resignation of three directors and some 20 mid-ranking officials at the organisation, the moderate Ruzgar newspaper said.

The paper said that all these officials had served under the previous governments led by ex-presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, whose "liberal" economic policies have often been denounced by Ahmadinejad.

"Farhad Rahbar, the president of the planning organisation, has asked the president (Ahmadinejad) to go back on his decision," the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

Mehr added that "experts from the planning organisation think that this decision will politicise the offices of the organisation and will prevent them from having long-term development programmes."

Two deputy oil ministers -- Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, in charge of international affairs, and national petrochemicals company head Asghar Ebrahimi Asl -- have also resigned in recent days, according to the press.

Since coming to power in 2005, Ahmadinejad has made substantial changes in the top-ranking positions in key government departments such as the oil ministry and the foreign ministry.