The Iran Assessment – worsening living condition Issue 8, 08/21/21
The unstable economy has caused the dollar value to fluctuate much this week and the trend is upwards. The financial authority is attempting to control and stabilize the value at 15,000 Tomans by injecting dollars in the market, the present rate stands at 27,000 Tomans. The Central Bank is scheduled to implement the project within the next two weeks. Therefore, the uncertainty and fluctuation of foreign exchange has caused increase in the purchase and hoarding of the Bahar-e-Azadi gold-coin. More than 62 offenders have been identified for buying in Tehran and Isfahan bazaars, amounting to 960,000 Bahar-e-Azadi coins.
Further, monitoring social networks on the Internet, the greatest worry for people in the week has been the issue of coronavirus and the lack of vaccine availability. This is followed by the daily inflation rise and rising cost of living. The rate of dairy products in the country is increasing by 3 to 11 percent weekly, e.g. the price of yogurt has increased by 50 percent this week. Reports indicate more than 233 major dairy product establishments, who were supplying the provincial diary need, have been closed, as their business is no longer viable. In addition, more than 40 million tons of household goods has been deliberately prevented to be cleared from port’s transit warehouses causing shortage in supplying goods to various provinces in the country.
It is speculated that from middle of the year, people will try to withdraw their savings from bank accounts and enter the cryptocurrency market, the digital currency business due to the very high inflation. With the withdrawal rate the Central Bank will not possibly be able to cope with the demand. This issue is considered important from two aspects: first it causes a very severe fluctuation in foreign exchange and digital currency market, secondly it will cause shortage of cash flow in the banks.
In addition, the country’s security services has actioned a community security search covered by the “House to House” monitoring Coronavirus spread, particularly in cities with population over 100,000, which the security services have marked as Red-Zones. Also, making inquiries to obtain daily security information from small businesses starting this week.
The Iran Transition Council is an alliance of Iranians of different ethnic and religious backgrounds launched in 2019 as an alternative voice to the government in Iran
