Azerbaijan, Baku , Oct. 21/ Trend F.Milad/
The Iranian Central Bank (CBI), with a considerable delay, announced the official inflation rate of Iranian month of Shahrivar (August 22-September 21) at 24 percent.
CBI usually announces the official rate of inflation in a week after the end of each month, the Fars News agency reported.
The real inflation rate in Iran is over 50 percent, Iranian university lecturer and economist, Mehdi Taghavi, said last week.
"The obtained figures show that the inflation rate is over 50 percent and some unofficial sources even claim it was 196 percent," ILNA reported quoted Mehdi Taghavi as saying.
According to the official statistics released by the Iranian central bank, the nation's inflation in August 2010 stood at 23.5 percent.
Taghavi believes that the Iran's currency (rial) lost over 80 percent of its value during the past few months.
"While the average economic growth in the Middle-East and North Africa region was 5 percent, Iran's economy is shrinking," he said
Taghavi added that the country's inflation is the highest in the Middle-East and North Africa region.
In its semi-annual World Economic Outlook, the IMF forecast Iran's gross domestic product will shrink 0.9 percent this year after a 2 percent growth in 2011.
Its prediction for this year was a downgrade from a forecast of 0.4 percent growth in its last report in April, but the IMF projected GDP will expand next year by 0.8 percent.
The IMF expects inflation to moderate to 21.8 percent in 2013 from 25.2 percent in 2012; many private economists, however, think inflation is well over 30 percent.