Baku, Azerbaijan, August 28
Trend:
Iran’s Central Bank said that the country’s inflation rate in urban areas for the 12-month period to the last Iranian calendar month (ended on Aug. 22) has increased by 1.3 percent compared to the preceding month and stood at 11.5 percent.
Earlier the Statistics Center of Iran put the inflation rate for the same period at 9.8 percent, 0.1 percent more compared to its figure for last month.
The CBI report released Aug. 28, indicates a 1.7 percent difference between the figures unveiled by the two official Iranian entities.
The announced inflation rate between the two organizations has been different in recent months and the Statistical Center's inflation rate has been lower than that of the Central Bank.
The Central Bank also said that setting the Iranian fiscal year 1395 (March 21, 2016 to March 20, 2017) as the main one, that is 1395=100, the consumer price index (CPI) in Iran’s urban areas stood at 133.8 units in the last Iranian calendar month, which is 5.5 percent more than in the preceding month.
The figure shows an annual growth of 24.2 percent, which means the point-to-point inflation for the country's urban areas in the fifth month has surged to over 24 percent.
Point-to-point inflation is a term frequently used by the Iranian government, denoting the inflation usually over one month.
The CBI earlier said that the recent decrease of Iran’s national currency value has led to increase of the inflation, which became two-digit in the previous month, after experiencing several month of one-digit rate.
Iranian rial has lost more than half its value since April amid fears of returning US sanctions after President Donald Trump in May withdrew the US from a deal on Tehran’s nuclear program. The fall of the national currency has provoked a public outcry over the quick rise of prices of imported consumer goods.
According to the CBI, the index for foods and drinks shows an increase by 7.6 percent compared to the preceding month and a growth rate of 35.9 percent compared to the same time of last year, according to the CBI.
The index for tobacco registered a rise by 24.3 percent compared to the preceding month and a growth rate of 114.4 percent when compared to the same time last year.
The index for clothes and health care increased by 19.5 and 15.2 percent year-on-year, meanwhile the index for housing, electricity and fuels witnessed a 11.6 percent increase.
The education sector registered an annual growth of 14.2 percent.
The annual increase for ICT, transportation and service sectors stood at 23.5, 35.9 and 14.4 percent, respectively.
The Iranian Parliament Research Center has forecasted that Iran’ inflation rate in the current fiscal year (started March 20) will stand at 11.5 percent.
The inflation rate in Iran in 2005 was about 10.4 percent, but it climbed above 37 percent, before President Hassan Rouhani came to power in mid-2013. Nonetheless, for the first time over the past 26 years, that figure declined into a single-digit row, bottoming out at 8.6 percent in June 2016.
