Baku, Azerbaijan, July 27
By Farhad Daneshvar – Trend:
An Iranian financial analyst has expressed optimistic views about the country’s economic situation during President Hassan Rouhani’s second term, amid concerns over a recent decision by the US to impose new sanctions on the Middle Eastern nation.
Although the recent sanctions have cast shadow over the economic outcome of a nuclear deal Iran reached in 2015 with the world powers, Mehrdad Seyed Asgari, a Norway-based Iranian financial analyst, still believes that the nation will gradually witness a boost in the economic situation over the next four years.
In an interview with Trend, Mehrdad Seyed Asgari forecast that President Rouhani is very likely to channel his efforts into bringing more transparency into the country’s economic policies.
Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who agreed the nuclear deal with world powers to limit Iran's nuclear program, was re-elected with an emphatic victory in a May election and he is to be officially inaugurated for another four years as the country’s chief executive on August 5.
Elaborating on his forecast, the expert touched upon the country’s inflation rate, saying that bringing down the rate of inflation could help the Iranian economy climb out of recession.
The inflation rate in Iran for the first time over the past 26 years eased into single digits bottoming out at 8.6 percent last June, though data by the country’s Central Bank for the 12-month period to the third calendar month ending June 21 has shown that the figure hit 10.2 percent.
Mehrdad Seyed Asgari suggested that the country’s current inflation rate and other economic indicators show that Iranian economy is moving out of recession.
“The housing prices are going up and the number of trades in the housing sector has increased by 12 percent. The Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) has also been improving over the past month. These indicators prove that the country is gradually pulling out of recession,” he said.
“However, the diplomatic rows, in particular disputes with Saudi Arabia and also the new sanctions may leave a negative impact,” Seyed Asgari concluded.
The US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to slap new sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea.