Source: Agence France Presse
By: Farhad Pouladi
TEHRAN — The head of the Iranian central bank has resigned, the third departure of a key economic policymaker from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration in just two weeks, the official IRNA agency reported Sunday.
The resignation of Ebrahim Sheibani comes after the unexpected departures of the oil and industry ministers August 12, a move that was widely seen as an attempt by Ahmadinejad to increase his control over the economy.
"Sheibani’s resignation as governor of the central bank has been accepted," by the president, the news agency quoted a source in Iran’s economy and finance ministry as saying.
The source added that one of the candidates to replace Sheibani was Tahmasb Mazaheri, the economy minister under Ahmadinejad’s reformist predecessor Mohammad Khatami, although no decision had yet been taken.
No explanation was given for the resignation, which had been widely predicted in the Iranian media.
But Sheibani had reportedly been at odds with Ahmadinejad over a surprise government decision May 22 to cut interest rates.
Both Sheibani and economy minister Davoud Danesh Jaafari were reported not to have been consulted over the decision, which many economists considered highly unwise in an economy that was already facing inflationary pressures.
Ahmadinejad has been criticized across the political spectrum in Iran for the country’s high inflation, and for ploughing windfall revenues from high oil prices into expensive infrastructure projects.
Both the industry and oil ministers issued stark warnings to Ahmadinejad over his economic policies after they quit.
Former oil minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh, a veteran of the ministry who revealed he had been sacked by the president, said that the country was heading to an energy "catastrophe" owing to high consumption.
Industry minister Alireza Tahmasebi also launched a stinging attack on Ahmadinejad’s economic policies in his resignation letter, complaining of under-investment and damaging personnel changes.
Prices of basic goods and services – especially vegetables and poultry – have leapt in Iran since the New Year in March, hitting the poor hardest.
The central bank has forecast that inflation will reach 17 percent in the current Iranian year to March 2008, compared with an official rate of 13.5 percent last year.
But many economists dispute even this figure, and Iranian parliamentary research has estimated that inflation, this year, is running at 22.4 percent on the back of money supply growth of a colossal 40 percent.
Social security and welfare minister Abdolreza Mesri was quoted as saying, earlier this month, that 9.2 million people out of Iran’s 70.4 million people were living under the poverty line.
Sheibani’s departure came on the same day that an Iranian general with a background in the Revolutionary Guards replaced a top aide to Ahmadinejad in a key interior ministry post.
Armed forces spokesman General Alireza Afshar took over the job of deputy interior minister for political affairs from Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, one of the president’s closest confidants.
