Central Bank of Iran Claims 22% Inflation Rate for Current Year

The Central Bank of Iran has taken an unprecedented step by publishing its forecast for the annual inflation rate, stating that inflation in the current year will be 22 percent.

The Central Bank of Iran previously only published its estimates of inflation rates for the preceding month and never made forecasts about the future.

With increasing criticism regarding the discrepancy between the Statistics Center’s reports and the Central Bank’s estimates, this institution suspended the publication of monthly inflation reports starting in 1397 (2018).

The Central Bank stated in a report: “The inflation rate in the current year will continue its declining trend. Accordingly, the Central Bank sets its inflation rate target at 22 percent with a range of plus or minus 2 percentage points”.

This comes as the International Monetary Fund estimates Iran’s inflation rate for the current year to be 34.2 percent. The inflation rate last year was 41.1 percent.

The Central Bank claims to have implemented measures that “laid the groundwork for redirecting the economy from spring 1398 (2019), and the results were evident before the outbreak of the coronavirus in the form of improvements in macroeconomic indicators such as inflation rate, non-oil economic sector growth, and large industrial workshop production indices, among others”.

The claim of non-oil economic growth comes despite the International Monetary Fund’s estimate that Iran’s non-oil economic growth rate was negative 1.2 percent last year and will be negative 6 percent in the current year.

Source: Radio Farda