The Iranian regime’ Statistical Center has announced in its latest report that the income and expense balance of urban and rural households in the past year was “positive” and claimed that the average annual income growth of urban households exceeded the average annual expense growth.
This is despite the fact that the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare of the Iranian regime had previously announced in a report that in 2022, the poverty line for a four-person household was 77 million rials (approximately $154) for the entire country and 71.4 million rials (approximately $143) in Tehran. Whereas in 2021, this figure was 45.41 million rials (approximately $91) for the entire country.
In recent years, statistical inconsistencies and their mismatch with the country’s economic realities have become the subject of criticism by experts and members of the parliament. In this regard, the regime’s ILNA news agency wrote on July 18 that “inflation is 120 percent, the government says it is 40 percent.” The news agency stated that a member of the regime’s parliament questioned the data provided by the government regarding inflation and rising prices.
In response to the statistics and figures presented by the government in the economic field, Gholamreza Nouri Ghazaljeh, a member of the regime’s Majlis (parliament), said, “To put it briefly, when it is said that inflation is controlled or reduced and the government presents some statistics and figures about it, they are all products of the government’s and officials’ minds and are not accurate.”
According to Nouri, the criteria used to determine the official inflation rate have no resemblance to the realities of people’s lives.
On January 3, in response to controversies surrounding the announcement of the poverty line, the regime’s Ham-Mihan newspaper quoted Hamid Haj Esmaeili, a labor market expert, as saying, “We have been experiencing an inflation rate of over 40 percent in the country for nearly three years, and people’s incomes barely make it to the end of the year.”
According to the latest report by the Statistical Center of Iran, the average annual income of urban households in 2022 was estimated at 1669.64 million rials (approximately $3,340), and rural households had an income of 986.38 million rials (approximately $1,973), which shows an increase of 48.5 percent and 54.8 percent, respectively, compared to the previous year. The center also estimated the net expense of urban households in the past year to be 137.146 million rials (approximately $2,743) and stated that this amount had increased by 48.3 percent compared to 2021.
According to the announcement of this center, the net expense of rural households in the past year was estimated to be 788.59 million rials (approximately $1,577), indicating a growth of 51.9 percent compared to 2021.
The ambiguity arising from government statistics lies in the type of items listed in the price index and the method of discovering their prices. Critics argue that in the housing sector, the average price per square meter in Tehran has exceeded 700 million rials (approximately $1,400), while the figures cited in the reports are based on prices below 500 million rials (approximately $1,000).
In another section of the report on income, the statistical center considers “income from rental properties” for households that do not pay it, which, on average, has a 20 percent impact on the reported income increase.
Regarding the reason for ceasing the announcement of inflation statistics, Mohammad Reza Farzin, the governor of the Central Bank, had previously said, “Regarding inflation statistics, since the law requires the Statistical Center to publish it, we no longer publish it, and it is more of a legal decree. Although there are still disputes over the source of its publication, due to its legal nature, we have prevented the publication of the inflation statistics.”
