Apr 01 2021

While the regime’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, called the New Persian Year of 1400, the year of “Production, support and removing barriers,” Iran’s economy is on freefall due to the regime’s institutionalized corruption.

“Currently, Iranian families have to endure over 30% of the inflation rate. Economists not only predict a positive economic incline in Iran, but they also believe the inflation rate will be 30% or even more,” wrote the state-run Tejaratnews on Monday.

“Since the future of the coronavirus outbreak is unclear, and at least in the first six months, the [entire system] will be involved in [sham presidential] elections, and the economic policy-making sector will be slow. Next year does not seem to be a bright year in terms of economic variables,” Tejarat news article adds, quoting Farshad Fatemi, one of the regime’s economists.

While the regime announced the inflation rate is above 30%, Prof. Steve Hanke from John Hopkins University predicted in December that Iran’s real inflation rate is 97.52%.

“In the Statistical Center of Iran’s [month of] Azar in [the Persian year of] 1399 report, Iran’s Inflation is 30.5% a year. FALSE. By utilizing purchasing power parity and high-frequency data, I accurately measure Iran’s inflation to be 97.52%. That’s more than three times the official BOGUS rate!” Prof Hanke wrote on Twitter.

As Prof Hanks underlined, “Iran’s corrupt government produces corrupt ‘facts.’” In other words, the regime tries to downplay the situation by giving much smaller numbers of Iran’s economic indicators, such as inflation. Khamenei meanwhile names the year, without acting to resolve Iran’s economic crisis.

“If we are supposed to name the year, and the involved organizations give fabricated reports to make the situation look good, while people are waiting in long queues to buy poultry, it means we have not achieved anything, Mehdi Ghazanfari, former Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade, told the state-run Tasnim Newsagency on Monday adding, “Many organizations manipulate reports and make numbers, so a measurement system must be set up. Mismanagement at various levels usually manifests itself in economic indicators. But we try to keep a facade, and with useless decisions, problems practically turn into crises.”
Concerning the poverty and the challenges people face, the state-run Etemad daily on March 18 wrote:
“Long queues [for purchasing basic needs such as poultry], skyrocketing prices and shortages of food items in the market and a few hundred percent increases in fruit prices are just some of what happened to Iranian families last year. While we are reaching the end of [the Persian] year, important economic indicators such as liquidity, inflation, and economic growth do not show promising figures. Despite the positive economic growth rate of 2.2%, the inflation and liquidity rate, by the end of February this year, have been 34.2 percent and 3,300 thousand billion tomans, respectively. This could be a warning sign of rising inflation next year.”

Yet, the root of Iran’s economic crisis is not only the regime’s mismanagement. The blame also falls on the regime’s institutionalized corruption and wrong policies. In other words, unlike what the mullahs’ apologists try to sell, Iran’s economic crisis is not due to the sanctions.

“We had $ 119 billion in foreign exchange earnings in one year. Last year, we had less than $ 15 billion in foreign exchange earnings, but we had inflation and skyrocketing prices in both years. Our problem is not lacking money, and we have problems even when we do have money. “On one side, there are mountains of wealth. On the other side, there is poverty,” Mohammad Baghaer Ghalibaf, the regime’s Parliament speaker, acknowledged on Monday, during the factional feuding, according to the state-run Khane-Melat news agency.
“Naming a year without its requirements in consecutive years has caused these names to take on more of a propaganda and slogan role and sometimes become a contradiction, and the year 1400 is no exception to this rule. Systematic corruption is a serious obstacle to increasing national capital. Therefore, we need serious, real, and legal reforms in the [regime] to combat and reduce it, not slogans,” said Azar Mansouri, a senior member of the Union of Islamic Iran People Party, mocking Khamenei’s speech.

“Many experts believe that Iran’s economy is sick. But are the country’s economic problems being really due to foreign sanctions? If we review the words of the experts, we will come to the answer which is ‘no,’” wrote the state-run Arman daily on March 16 about Iran’s economic crisis, in an article titled “People pay the price of government’s inaction.”

While Iran’s economy is on freefall, the regime spends billions of dollars for its nuclear and missile projects.

“The unveiling ceremony of the new Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) naval missile city and the annexation of missile equipment to this force was held this morning, March 15, in the presence of IRGC Brigadier General Hossein Salami, Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC, Brigadier General Alireza Tangsiri, Commander of the IRGC Navy and a group of commanders. According to our reporter, a large number of cruise and ballistic missile systems and missiles with various ranges were displayed in the naval missile city of the IRGC,” the state-run Tasnim news agency wrote On March 15, 2021.

This is why people from all walks of life in Iran hold protests and chant: “Our enemy is right here; they lie it is the U.S.”

Source » ncr-iran