On August 21, Tabnak newspaper reported about a new proposal that was presented by Fereydoon Abbasi, a member of the Majlis (Parliament), for establishing a “national data center.” He believes that, “security, commercial and economic data should not be transparent and we should have a national data center that decides what figures can be published.”
It is worth noting that the central bank is no longer allowed to provide regular statistics of the economic situation, and the Ministry of Industries, Mines, and Trade is also excused from giving its relevant statistics. The Statistics Center, which is in charge of the matter, also refrains from publishing statistics about economic challenges, so it only publishes conservative estimates. It now remains to be seen what use the purported National Data Center will play.
Vahid Shaghaghi, an economist, said that the failure to provide the country’s economic and commercial statistics will lead to lack of transparency and chaos and increase inflationary expectations, and this will cause the government officials to have wrong analyses of the economic future.
An important confession by of head of the Planning and Budget Organization
The disputes between factions in mullahs’ regime sometimes reveal important facts about the economy.
For example, Davood Manzoor, the head of the Planning and Budget Organization of the current government, recently revealed several instances of the critical economic situation. One of them is regime’s fear of strong public protests due to the official increase in the price of gasoline: “Despite serious restrictions on fuel and gasoline, the government is forced not to increase the price of energy carriers because it does not want to cause a new shock to the economy.” (Source: Hammihan newspaper, August 28)
Heavy taxes on producers
On August 31, Donya-e-Eqtesad newspaper quoted the Research Center of the Iran Chamber as saying, “Breaking the backs of producers who are forced to pay heavy and various taxes has caused unemployment rates in Iran to be more than twice the average long-term unemployment rates in the world.”
Meanwhile, this same report shows the non-receipt of taxes from non-productive activities of centers and institutions affiliated to the regime.
Davood Manzoor also says that “in terms of energy, we are facing a serious limitation in gas, gasoline, and diesel, and all production capacities are used for current purposes.”
Meanwhile the regime is clamoring for a handful of dollars and offers everything that can be sold in the market at a cheap price, let alone gas and gasoline.
According to the latest OPEC statistics, Iran was the third largest gas producer in the world in 2022, and over the past two years, gas exports have grown by 62 percent.
On July 23, Fars News Agency wrote, “In 2021, Iran had exported about 18.425 billion cubic meters of gas, which has recorded an increase of 59.9 percent compared to 2020, when it exported 11.5 billion cubic meters.”
Recently, statistics on the export of electricity and gasoline have been revealed in a situation where the people of Iran are under the pressure of electricity cuts and gasoline has become scarce at fuel stations.
But his confession also contains parts of the truth, for example, that the economic growth in the last decade was very low and averaged at 0.7 percent per year or that “the 4 percent economic growth rate of the last two years did not display itself much and people do not feel the effect of economic growth” or the situation of “pension funds, which is one of the most serious issues in the country. Hence, 20 percent of the government’s budget is spent on pension funds.”
Subsidies went up in smoke
The most interesting thing is vanishing of subsidies due to the skyrocketing inflation, which Davood Manzoor has acknowledged by saying, “The increase in subsidies paid in the last two years went up in smoke due to the increasing inflation rate and disappeared and Iranian citizens did not benefit from subsidies.”
The hidden part of the economy is bigger
In the end, all these true and false confessions of Raisi’s Deputy led to this point that the said economic problems are only the visible part of the economy of the regime. On August 28, Jahan-e Sanat newspaper wrote: “The dissatisfactions and problems that were mentioned are the above-water part of the economy, and the underwater and hidden part of the economy may be bigger.”
The economists who were listening to the head of the Planning and Budget Organization come to conclusion that “other members of the government also comprehend the economic problems, although very late and after enormous cost imposed on people and that the dreamy and delusional promises they made before the elections were not possible to achieve.”
Raisi’s solution for economic crises, most of which have been hidden, is generally to deny them by engineering fake statistics and hiding the statistics or downplaying them. But economist Vahid Shaghaghi said, “The lack of publication of economic statistics does not cure the pain, because the contents of people’s refrigerators are completely indicative of their economic situation, and all people feel it and compare the food items in their refrigerators with their previous year”. (Source: Etemad newspaper, August 28)
