NCRI Staff
NCRI – Pointing to Iranian currency’s free fall, regime’s media are warning that this could lead to an eruption of public discontent, while also revealing that the Rial may drop to 70,000 against the US Dollar.
“Worrying about price hikes makes the society more fragile. It seems as if the US Dollar is planned to rise to more than 50,000 – and even 70,000, according to some informal news – against the Rial, so the government can compensate for its budget deficit. In other words, it’s the government’s direct demand to raise the price of foreign currencies to their real values”, writes Rouhani-linked Jahan-e-Sanat newspaper on February 6, 2018,
“A thousand-toman rise in the value of the US Dollar over the past few months has disturbed the market in such a way that even the Central Bank is not able to cope with the fluctuations, so that their short-term programs have failed to regulate the market. But that’s not all. The situation implies that this is the government that has inflicted such disturbance on the market so it can offset its budget deficit by putting its hands into people’s pockets”, the newspaper continues.
“Considering this, it could be said that repetition of the same process over the past few months shows that the government itself is involved in such fluctuations so as to reduce its budget deficit, as it seems that the government is running out of money towards the end of the (Persian) year and thus has resorted to currency market so it can make money by riding the waves of currency and gold coin fluctuations.
“But the statesmen have apparently forgotten that (regime’s) economy is on a shoestring and suffers so much confusion in its policy-making that such conditions may lead to its total collapse and bankruptcy.”
The state-run newspaper then adds “if the value of US Dollar remains around 48,000 to the Rial, then we’ll have to expect a 20 percent inflation rate in 2018. While currency prices are now rising on a daily and hourly basis, concerns over price hikes will make the society more fragile than ever.”
“Dwindling people’s purchasing power is not something to be taken for granted. Social harms and poverty will lower people’s tolerance, while the widening social gap will give rise to a lot of dangers that threaten society’s cultural and social development. Such degree of fluctuation and disintegration is a disease-like problem.”