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Official: Iran’s central bank unable to fully control forex price fluctuations

Business Materials 25 June 2013 17:11 (UTC +04:00)

Azerbaijan, Baku, May.25/ Trend F.Karimov/

Some factors which have caused fluctuations in foreign currency prices in recent years, are out of the bank's authority and ability, the Fars News Agency quoted Iran's central bank governor Mahmoud Bahmani as saying.

"Rise and fall in forex prices are affected mainly by political factors," he said, without elaborating on the factors.

"All of us saw the dollar fell about 6,000 rials within a few days. This is while the central bank had not taken any specific measure to reduce the dollar price," he noted. "I tell explicitly that the Central Bank was not involved in the significant fall of the dollar price as it had not been before involved in the dollar price hike in recent years," Bahmani said.

US dollar was sold at the price of 31,800 rials at the free market on Tuesday, while Euro was presented at the price of 41,500 rials.

U.S. dollar and euro were traded at the prices of 30,500, and 40,800 rials on Monday.

The prices faced a sharp fall in the past few days. Only a week ago USD was sold at the price of 36,000 rials.

Iran's national currency, the rial, lost about 50 percent of its foreign exchange value in less than a week in October 2012, hitting an all-time low of 35,500 versus the dollar. It was close to 10,000 in early 2011.

Critics believe that Iranian government is not controlling the price of dollar at the free market on purpose. They claim that the government wants to take advantage of selling dollar at the free market in order to compensate its lack of budget.

The government maintains an official reference rate of 12,260 rials to the dollar, but only a limited amount of foreign exchange is available at this rate.

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