Azerbaijan, Baku, March 5 /Trend S.Isayev, T. Jafarov/
Foreign media prevents investors from doing business in Iran, country's Deputy Economy Minister Behrouz Alishiri said, IRIB News reported.
"Many foreign investors seek to invest in Iran's markets, however due to restrictions that have been created, they are unable to do business here," Alishiri said, adding that the media also prevents the investors from investing in Iran.
"Western media acts as a supplement to the imposed sanctions," Alishiri said.
He noted that the West tries to confuse other countries, by showcasing the state of Iran's economy worse than it actually is.
"In the past four years foreign investments in Iran have grown up more than 150 percent," Alishiri said. "Of course we cannot reveal the methods that were used to increase the investments."
He also noted that the countries that supported sanctions on Iran are actually suffering more than Iran itself.
"Because of the sanctions, Iran was able to achieve certain success, which wouldn't have been achieved under normal circumstances," Alishiri said, adding that Iran managed to get out of the "Dutch disease".
In economics, the Dutch disease is the apparent relationship between the increase in exploitation of natural resources and a decline in the manufacturing sector.
The mechanism is that an increase in revenues from natural resources (or inflows of foreign aid) will make a given nation's currency stronger compared to that of other nations (manifest in an exchange rate), resulting in the nation's other exports becoming more expensive for other countries to buy, making the manufacturing sector less competitive. While it most often refers to natural resource discovery, it can also refer to "any development that results in a large inflow of foreign currency, including a sharp surge in natural resource prices, foreign assistance, and foreign direct investment".
Alishiri also spoke about the effect that the sanctions have on people in Iran.
"They say the sanctions do not target the people of Iran, they say the sanctions are imposed on the government. This is false," Alishiri said.
"They did not sell Iran parts of aircrafts, although it is being used by the people. Iran has problems with importing necessary medicine, which is also used by people, same as gasoline," he added.