While the Statistical Center of Iran had announced an inflation rate of about 39 percent for October 2023, the latest report from the Central Bank of Iran to the judiciary shows that the inflation index in October was 54.8 percent, the highest figure in the past 22 months.
The regime’s Central Bank suspended the publication of consumer price index data in 2023. The Statistical Center also released these indices with significant delays on a monthly basis to make their changes less noticeable compared to previous years.
The changes in the consumer price index over one year compared to a similar period in the previous year indicate the annual inflation rate. Evaluating this index is important because it includes a higher inflation memory.
In the early months of the Persian calendar year 1402 (which began on March 21, 2023), the Statistical Center of Iran changed the base year for inflation evaluations from 2016 to 2021, with the help of statistical manipulations to show a reduction in the inflation rate. However, the recent report from the Central Bank to the judiciary reveals that prices in October 2023 have increased by over a thousand percent compared to the base year of 2016.
The Central Bank provides the judiciary with a table of consumer goods and services price indices every year. An examination of this table, which has been leaked to the media, reveals a significant decline in people’s purchasing power and a continuous increase in the inflation rate.
The Central Bank’s report also indicates a significant monthly growth in inflation. This index had a 3.2 percent growth in October, and the monthly inflation rate in the past three months was also above three percent.
The growth of the consumer price index in October 2023 compared to the same period in the previous year also shows that point-to-point inflation is still above 50 percent. According to the data from this center, the point-to-point inflation in October was 54.3 percent, which, despite a 14-percentage point decrease in recent months, is still high.
In the first month of this fall, the average inflation was approximately equivalent to the point-to-point inflation and exceeded the threshold of 50 percent.
The significant growth of the inflation rate indicates the increasing economic turmoil in Ebrahim Raisi’s government.
Earlier, the Statistical Center of Iran had announced in a report that in October, the annual inflation rate had surpassed 45 percent for all Iranian households.
Although the Statistical Center had set the average of 45.5 percent as the annual inflation rate baseline, the data from this center also showed that people in at least nine provinces, including Hamadan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Kurdistan, Lorestan, Isfahan, Kermanshah, North Khorasan, Yazd, and East Azerbaijan, faced inflation rates above 50 percent, with the rate exceeding 56 percent in Yazd province.
Despite the fact that price increases are clear indicators of the upward trend in inflation in Iran, Ebrahim Raisi and his government officials continue to claim a reduction in the inflation rate and argue that it will drop below 30 percent by the end of this year.
These claims persist while people directly feel the impact of inflation and high prices in their daily lives. Examining the living conditions of Iranians reveals the reality that millions of people are getting poorer day by day, and among them, the situation of workers and minimum wage earners is even more concerning.
