Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb.5
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
A delegation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has paid a visit to Iran, the Mehr News Agency reported on February 5.
The delegation led by Martin Cerisola, met with the director of Iran's National Development Fund, Safdar Hosseini, in Tehran.
In January, the IMF announced it will resume annual evaluations of Iran's economy suspended by Tehran since the organisation's last mission nearly three years ago.
On November 12, 2013, the IMF predicted that Iran's real GDP growth rate will shrink by 1.5 percent in the current fiscal year (started on March 21), but will rise to 1.3 percent in the next fiscal year.
According to the IMF`s last Regional Economic Outlook covering the Middle East and Central Asia which was released on November 12, the country's real GDP growth decreased by 1.9 percent in the last fiscal year (ended March 21).
The IMF report also said that Iran's consumer price inflation will hit 42.3 percent in the current fiscal year, predicting that the figure will be 29 percent in the next fiscal year.
The figure was 30.5 percent in the last Iranian fiscal year.
IMF also said that Iran's general government overall fiscal balance that includes the National Development Fund, but excludes the Targeted Subsidy Organisation, is expected to reach a -2.5 and -4.4 percent of the GDP during the current and next Iranian fiscal year respectively, while the total government gross debt amount would be 6.0 and 8.8 percent of GDP respectively during current and next fiscal year.
Iran`s oil GDP is predicted to shrink by 4.6 percent during the current fiscal year, while non-oil GDP will shrink by 1.2 percent.
The IMF has also predicted that the country's oil GDP and non-oil GDP will stand at -2 and 1.5 percent respectively in the next Iranian fiscal year.
Iran's oil and non-oil GDP shrank by 11.9 and 0.9 percent respectively during the last Iranian fiscal year (ended March 21).
Edited by S.M.