Tehran, Iran, Aug.21
Trend:
Iran's trade, especially oil exports, are affecting the economy, while the decline of transactions due to US sanctions limits the foreign currency sources, said an Iranian economist.
Mahmoud Jamsaz spoke about the effect of unbalanced trade on foreign currency market in an interview with Trend.
"The unbalanced trade affects the foreign currency rate and the drop of trade balance will cause less dollar mass in the country. The domestic policies will also lead to the lack of balance in budget and import's mismanagement," he added.
"Wasting sources, while there is lack of transparency over country's costs abroad, will lead to the economy's negative growth. According to the International Monetary Fund, Iran's economic growth is minus 6 percent, because the country's sources are not used in production sector," he added.
"Currently, nobody thinks of changing the situation with the foreign currency. Given that the sources of foreign currency are becoming limited, it seems the country will face dollar deficit," he said. "Unfortunately, the NIMA system is failing and we can not have single foreign currency rate."
"The price of each barrel of oil in current Iranian year is $53. About 2.2 million barrels per day are used for domestic consumption, while only between 100,000 and 150,000 barrels are exported, and there is a danger of the seizure of oil tankers," he added.
"The government did not have enough foreign currency, and the restriction was only imposed to people going abroad, and sometimes it even injected foreign currency to the market to keep the prices down," he noted.
"Today, each dollar is 110,000 rial to 120,000 rial, but in case the sanctions continue, the money channels for foreign currency transactions will be limited. It seems that while the country is getting closer to making the third step in reducing its commitment to nuclear deal the dollar price will increase," he noted.
"The only solution is to continue exports of oil and non-oil and goods, as the exports of 100,000 to 200,000 barrels of oil per day with high discount and transferring it from ship to ship will not bring considerable amount of foreign currency to the country," he added.