Analysis by PMOI/MEK
Iran, December 11, 2020—In the past months, the price of goods in Iran has increased so much that they can no longer be described as “expensive.”
Skyrocketing prices have made many essential goods inaccessible not only to the impoverished sectors but also to the middle class.
From March to December, the price of chicken has tripled, going from 120,000 rials (approx. $0.46) to 360,000-400,000 rials (approx. $1.38-1.53) per kilogram.
The price of orange has tripled, and the price of milk has reached from 30,000 rials (approx. $0.11) to 120,000 rials (about $0.46) per bottle.
The price of other basic needs such as bread, vegetables, butter, oil and everything else that people need has increased several-fold.
Eating red meat has become a dream not only for the poor but also many middle class families. The situation has aggravated to the point that many people are turning to buying bones because they can’t afford meat.
Of course, instead of trying to subsidize the price of meat and make it available to more people, the regime announced that authorities will seek and arrest those who sell bones.
Despite skyrocketing prices for the people,the semi-official ILNA news agency reported on November 16 that more than 70 percent of workers are on minimum-wage salaries and can no longer afford to buy red meat or even white meat.
According to an October 4 report by the Tejarat News website, the head of the lamb union announced: “Due to high meat prices, lamb sales in low-income areas had fallen by 40 percent.”
“Many workers said that they had not been able to buy meat for their families for months and that the only protein items they can afford are eggs,” according to the ILNA news agency, on November 16.
According to the Statistics Center of Iran, the decline in purchase of food items such as meat, rice, dairy and oil in the middle class began about 10 years ago and has now reached its peak.
This means that even the middle class has difficulty meeting its daily needs.
In a meeting with the Supreme Economic Council, Iranian regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei admitted that the people's livelihoods are really in poor conditions.
This is while the poverty line has reached 100 million rials (approx. $385), and workers and minimum-wage earners receive about 20 million rials (approx. $77) per month.
To really understand what the poverty line is, we should compare the current prices of dollar, gold, housing and cars with what they were three years ago.
The price of dollar has increased eightfold and the gold coins 18-fold. Housing has become seven times more expensive and cars 10. Meanwhile, people's purchase power has reduced by a third over the past year.
In this situation,regime president Hassan Rouhani speaks as if all the problems are due to sanctions, and everything will be resolved with government change in the United States.
It is worth noting, however, that during the tenure of Rouhani’s predecessor Mahmood Ahmadinejad, the regime received nearly $800 billion in oil sales, but the people's lives got worse and worse every year.
In his rivalries with Ahadminejad and Khamenei, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, another former regime president, observed “It’s not clear how they devoured the $800 billion.”
In an interview with Mardom Salari daily, on August 27, economist Ehsan Soltani said, “The country received about $180 billion in oil and commodity exports in 2018 and 2019, and despite sanctions, the country had $100 billion in currency reserves. In contrast, the country's import figure in the past two years—despite smuggling and other cases—has been $100 billion and about $60 to 80 billion of capital has left the country.”
Soltani further said that with this $280 billion, the government should have been able to run the country for five years without suffering a currency shock. “The events that took place in the rise of dollar price show that there has been a huge corruption of exports and the price of currency,” he said.
In September 2019, Farhad Dejpsand, the regime's Minister of Economy, said that in the past 18 months the regime had $61 billion in non-oil exports, of which only $27 billion has returned to the country and $34 billion has not returned.
In October 2019, Javad Karimi-Ghodousi, the deputy speaker of the parliament, said that Rouhani had ordered to Valiollah Seif, the former head of the Central Bank, to hand over $36.1 billion from the treasury to three gangs smuggling currency, goods, and drugs, and they took the money to Sulaymaniyah, Iraq.
“$30 billion has been lost in the banking network in the last 10 months,” said economist Saeed Laylaz, according to a November 28 report by the ILNA news agency.
Ezzatollah Yousefian Molla, a former member of the regime’s Majlis (parliament), also revealed a loss of $9 billion according to a report by the Donyaye Eghtesad website, on Aguest 11, 2018.
The deteriorating conditions of ordinary Iranians comes at a time that the regime is spending billions of dollars on missile, nuclear and war mongering projects in the region.
Khamenei has money for missile projects, for military exercises and the construction of various military equipment for the Houthis in Yemen and for the war in Syria, but he doesn’t have money to put food and bread on the table of millions of Iranian families.
The regime claims that the high prices are caused by hoarders, who should be dealt with. But the reality is that skyrocketing prices are due to the immense liquidity and the corrupt policies of the regime itself.
In 1979, Iran’s liquidity was 2.580 trillion rials, but now it has reached 29,000 trillion rials, an 11,240-fold increase. This astronomical increase in liquidity has greatly increased inflation.
The regime’s solution to fight the existing inflation is to create a base to regulate the market.
Of course, the regime must be terrified of the fed-up masses. Everybody knows, the critical economic and social conditions of the country have created a fertile ground for the development and the explosion of the anger and hatred of the famished people.
