TEHRAN, Iran, May 6
Trend:
Removing four zeros from the national currency will reduce mistakes by banks when converting rial to toman, said the Iranian president.
"There have been mistakes over converting rial to toman that confused bank's clerks and people. Our national currency is rial, but people don't refer to it daily life, so we remove four zeros to free people from useless calculations," said Hassan Rouhani, Trend reports citing IRNA.
"I also insisted that the bill on removal of the four zeros to be submitted to the parliament; its adoption will help people, since all the daily trades are done based on toman," the head of state said. "Thus, we address the issue, facilitate making calculations and reduce the numbers to smaller figure."
"We will change the national currency to something that always being used by the people. It will be easier to operate with figures, while it is unlikely that this will affect the inflation and economy," he added.
Iran’s parliament has passed a bill allowing the government to slash four zeros from the rial,
The idea of removing four zeros has been floated since 2008, but gained strength after 2018, when the US left Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal and re-imposed sanctions, which led to devaluation of Iran's national currency.
The president noted that the government will continue to assign its shares on the stock exchange in current Iranian year (started March 20, 2020) to reach leap production.
"Another way to reduce inflation and liquidity problem is that people will enter the stock market, and this will create transparency and decrease corruption in state companies. About 50 million people own the Justice Shares; the government has provided interest rate to people for three installments, so now the shares will be at people's disposal," Rouhani said.
"Those who seek to sell their shares on the stock exchange can easily go to the justice share website and chose the option for selling their shares, while those who are not interested can get the interest rate annually," he added.
"In past two years, We faced sanctions in the past two years and now, coronavirus created difficulties for jobs, but the shares can help people to compensate losses. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Securities & Exchange Council will provide simple instructions to people," he said.