Iran's 2019 inflation rate exceeded IMF's forecast
On Sunday, April 1, the Statistical Center of Iran announced in a report that inflation in the 12 months ending in March 2020 reached 36.4 percent compared to the same period last year.
This figure is even higher than the International Monetary Fund's latest forecast for Iran's inflation rate last year. In its latest assessment of Iran's inflation rate, published in October 2020, the international institution had predicted that Iran's annual inflation in 2020 would be around 30.5 percent.
The Statistical Center of Iran also says in its report that the point-to-point inflation in March (the growth in prices in March of last year compared to March 2019) was about 48.7 percent.
However, some figures published in the Statistics Center's detailed price growth report are even much lower than estimates from other official institutions of the Islamic Republic.
For example, while the Statistics Center says that the price of red meat and poultry increased by only 62 percent in March last year compared to the same month in 2019, statistics from the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade show that the price increase was more than 77 percent.
The Ministry of Health says that the price of chicken meat in March 2019 was around 12,500 tomans, but in March last year it rose to more than 22,000 tomans.
This is while the actual price of chicken, according to domestic media reports and not the official price announced by the government, had reached 30,000 Tomans in the final weeks of last year; in other words, the point-to-point inflation for chicken meat in March is actually 140 percent.
Also, while the Statistics Center claims that the increase in housing prices between March 2019 and March 2020 was below 30 percent, the latest Central Bank statistics show that the growth in housing prices in Tehran from February 2019 to February 2020 was more than 97 percent. The Central Bank has not yet published the March report.
However, the Statistical Center of Iran says that the point-to-point inflation rate for food items in March last year was an average of 66.6 percent, and for non-food goods and services, about 40.5 percent.
The International Monetary Fund had predicted that the inflation rate in Iran for 2020 would be around 30.5 percent, the highest figure in the world after Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Lebanon, and Sudan.
This international organization has predicted Iran's inflation rate to be 30 percent for the current solar year, which will be the highest figure in the world after Venezuela, Sudan, Yemen, and Suriname.
Source: Radio Farda
