Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 13
By Khalid Kazimov – Trend:
A senior Iranian lawmaker has forecasted that the inflation rate in the country would climb above 10 percent over the coming fiscal year (starting March 21).
“We forecast that the inflation rate in the next year would become a double-digit figure. However, its exact figure depends on the prices of energy carriers,” IBENA (Iranian banks and economy news agency) quoted Mohammadreza Pourebrahimi, the head of parliamentary commission for economy as saying.
He further added that in case the government increases the prices of energy carries the inflation rate would definitely reach a double-digit figure over the next year.
Iran’s inflation rate had climbed above 30 percent, before President Hassan Rouhani came to power in mid-2013. Nonetheless, for the first time over the past 26 years, that figure declined into a single-digit row, bottoming out at 8.6 percent in June 2016. Despite that fact, according to the country’s Central Bank report for the 12-month period ending on Dec 22, 2017, inflation rate peaked at 10 percent.
The International Monetary Fund earlier said that Iran’s real GDP growth is projected to reach 4.2 percent in 2017/18 and is expected to be sustained or even rise toward 4.5 percent over the medium-term if financial sector reform takes hold in the country.
The Iranian government through its draft budget has proposed to increase the prices of gasoline by 50 percent over the coming fiscal year.