Almost every stock market in the world has seen a heavy plunge in recent weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic, but somehow the Iranian stock market is bucking the trend, having seen positive growth since the coronavirus peak in March.
The Iranian government is bragging about this, with President Hassan Rouhani even claiming that the rest of the world cannot manage their stock markets, but that is not the truth.
Stock sales recently peaked from early March onwards, when the regime decided to sell eight billion shares in the Social Security Investment Company (Shasta) to two million people for a total of 70 trillion rials or about 10% of Shasta’s capital.
Shasta, a large holding company that owns 187 large companies and 44,000 workforces, belongs to retired people and those insured by the Social Security Organization, but the board members and CEOs are appointed by the government.
This causes a problem with debt. Rouhani’s government owes Shasta over 2.5 quadrillion rials, which is nothing short of theft from the millions of workers who paid premiums into this company that has nothing to do with the government.
Mohammad Shariatmadari, the regime’s Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, said that he wanted to make Shasta more transparent, but didn’t explain how much has been stolen because of the current lack of transparency.
Why did the Iranian regime launch propaganda regarding the stock market? Simply, they had to compensate for the 2019/20 and 2020/21 budget deficit of nearly 800 trillion rials. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported that Iran’s 2019 economic growth was minus 9.5%, with the global economy set to drop 3% in 2020, while the World Bank said that Iran would see a 38.3% inflation rate.
Therefore, they would steal the people’s meager assets through propaganda and enrich the mullahs’ mafia gangs by selling shares that are riskier than most, including in as yet unbuilt projects and firms that exist only on paper, like Golestan Petrochemical.
Rouhani’s government wants to go further, by listing some state-owned companies, including Iranian Mines & Mining Industries Development & Renovation (IMIDRO), Mobarakeh Steel, and Sarcheshmeh Copper.
Economic experts in Iran say that the regime created a stock market bubble with propaganda, instead of a natural increase in production, but that this bubble will soon burst. According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), this will reveal the regime’s anti-economic nature, where the people are robbed in the name of the mullah’s profits.
Source » irannewsupdate