{"id":237300,"date":"2021-04-05T08:07:39","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T13:07:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=237300"},"modified":"2023-02-01T05:00:06","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T04:00:06","slug":"irans-regime-acknowledges-worsening-economic-decline-but-has-no-plan-to-reverse-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/economy\/irans-regime-acknowledges-worsening-economic-decline-but-has-no-plan-to-reverse-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s Regime Acknowledges Worsening Economic Decline but Has No Plan To Reverse It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"iran-economy-bourse\"<\/p>\n

Last year, economic conditions in Iran landed the country in the fourth slot on a ranking based on the misery index. The underlying calculations are based on a combination of the unemployment rate and the rate of inflation, both of which have been escalating more or less consistently for several years.<\/p>\n

Notably, this trend began before US policy toward the Iranian regime changed under the previous US administration, and at a time when foreign pressure on that regime was arguably at an all-time low. Iran\u2019s score on the misery index was over 70 in 2020, even according to state-run media outlets like the Hamdeli daily newspaper. This marked a precipitous increase from a score of roughly 45 percent in 2019 but was also the continuation of a trend that was clearly established by a jump from 20 percent to nearly 40 percent between 2017 and 2018.<\/p>\n

The contributing factor of inflation has been obvious throughout those four years. Before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, one US dollar was worth about 70 Iranian rials. In early 2017, the exchange rate stood at around 37,000 to one, and it ballooned rapidly from there. In the spring of 2020, the value of Iran\u2019s national currency fell 11 percent in just two months, settling for a while at 180,000 rials to the dollar before continuing its plunge.<\/p>\n

The most recent figures suggest an exchange rate of around a quarter of a million to one, although Iranian authorities have attempted to mitigate the economic impact, at least for wealth and well-connected individuals, by maintaining an artificial exchange rate that is separate from the market rate. If this has had any impact on the economic condition of ordinary Iranians, it has only been to accelerate the rise of consumer prices and thus exacerbate the effects of poverty upon the vast majority of the population.<\/p>\n

Here too, Iranian state media either cannot or will not deny the situation outright. Official statistics acknowledge that fully three-quarters of Iran\u2019s 80-million person population is currently living under the poverty line. But even this estimate fails to reflect the severity of the crisis for many of those 60 million impoverished Iranians. This is largely because the government-set poverty line of 100 million rials is around five times higher than the average annual income for working-class families in Iran.<\/p>\n

Of course, poverty-level wages were already a source of considerable hardship prior to the sharp economic downturn of recent years. But now more and more Iranians are struggling to afford the most basic necessities. The housing, automobile, and appliance industries have seen 100 percent inflation, and the prices of various foodstuffs have increased by anywhere from 30 percent to 330 percent in just the past year. As a result, countless Iranians have been forced to subsist on dangerously restricted diets, foregoing meat, poultry, and fruit while struggling to find any means whatsoever of raising their standard of living a little closer to what they\u2019d known in prior years.<\/p>\n

Naturally, this desperation has made it impossible for Iranians to properly safeguard themselves against the coronavirus pandemic<\/a>, least of all when the government has been actively encouraging the public to work as much as they can and to help bolster an economy that is failing as a result of rampant government mismanagement and lavish spending on nuclear<\/a> and missile projects, and regime\u2019s proxies in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the region.<\/p>\n

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How the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps IRGC plunders Iran\u2019s economy<\/div><\/div>
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