The rise in inflation and its astronomical records over the years has always been criticized by the public and, of course, by a wide range of Iran’s economists; While in most countries of the world, inflation is no longer an unsolvable problem and most countries have succeeded in single-digit inflation, but in Iran not only has not been a suitable solution to control inflation, but also officials with different economic and wrong perspectives are counting each other responsible for the problems.
The question is, why Iran’s government cannot control the growth of liquidity in the country? The fact is that the main problem in economics is the coordination of policies, that is, monetary, fiscal, currency, and trade policies must be coordinated.
But with the widespread corruption in the government, this has become impossible.
The Iranian state media is acknowledging, ahead of Ebrahim Raisi taking the office of president, that the inflation rate in the country is now 71%, which will have “severe” consequences for the mullahs.
The Jahan-e Sanat daily wrote on July 3: “A study of changes in the consumer price index over the years and the recording of inflation rates above 30% tells us that households in the country lose an average of 20% of their purchasing power every year. The latest estimates from the Statistics Center show that the average inflation rate at the end of June reached 43%.”
Meanwhile, the Etemad daily published the next day that the average shopping basket has climbed 50% in price because of inflation, having looked at the Statistics Center report of 53 common food items, with 41 of those items having inflation rates of over 46.9%.
However, the Jahan-e Sanat daily reports that the figure is much higher because the Statistics Center (and other government institutions) don’t take real market developments into account. They cited expert Ehsan Soltani as saying that the June inflation rate was 71% when you take into account market realities.
The paper explained that rather than sort the economic crisis, the officials would rather downplay the situation because the mullahs do not have a solution. While Raisi promises economic reform, Jahan-e Sanat advises that those repressions will “show themselves somewhere else”.
The Resalat daily wrote: “Raisi needs sustainable resources to answer people’s needs and fulfill his plans. These resources have either been embezzled or wasted before entering the treasury. The question is, then, how can all those promises be fulfilled without resources amid sanctions?”
The Iranian government often claims that sanctions are the major problem, but actually, that’s not true. Forbes notes that the number of millionaires has risen dramatically (up 21.6%), in the past year, despite sanctions and the pandemic. For context, the global average increase was 6.3%. Most millionaires are officials and their relatives.
The Ebtekar daily wrote: “The crucial question is how in a year when a large part of Iranian society is living in poverty, misery, and has a serious conflict with inflation, tens of thousands of people succeeded in attracting such huge capital?”
While the Setar-e Sobh wrote that when the Iranian people face economic challenges, the number of embezzlers increases due to a corruption cycle, which shows us that the suffering is caused by the mullahs and not sanctions.
The Iranian Resistance wrote: “The regime has no solution for Iran’s economic crises since it has created them and continues to amplify them. But the economic and social crises have turned the society into a powder keg, which frightens the mullahs’ regime.”
