Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 15
By Fatih Karimov - Trend: Mehr Housing Project caused 45 percent inflation in Iran.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the Central Bank printed 450 trillion rials (some $13 billion based on USD free market exchange rate of 34,000 rials) and handed over to the Maskan (housing) Bank, Iran's Mehr news agency reported on Dec. 15.
However, the administration is inevitably obliged to complete the project because the people's trust should not be damaged, he said.
The Mehr Housing Project was approved in 2004 during the incumbency of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It had envisaged building 50,000 units per year for low-income people.
In November 2013, Iranian transport minister Abbas Akhoundi said that more than 10 trillion rials (about $300 million) has been allocated to complete the semi-finished residential units under the Mehr Housing Project in Iran.
Under the Mehr plan, real estate developers are offered free parcels of land in return for building cheap, residential units for first-time buyers, who receive 99-year mortgages for the purchase of the land.
The inflation rate in Iran in 2005, when Ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the government was about 10.4 percent, but in mid-2013, when Ahmadinejd handed over the office to Rouhani, the inflation rate and point-to-point inflation rate were 37.5 percent and 44 percent, respectively.
Edited by CN