Vistar - Business Monitor

Term-Deposit Rate Ceiling May be Decreased to 15%

May 22, 2016 Abdol-Naser Hemmati, the ex-head of the banks coordination council, announced that bankers would meet in two weeks’ time to approve a plan to further reduce deposit rate ceiling to 15 percent from 18 percent. One of the main concerns of banks is that further decline in deposit rate ceiling may cause billion of rials in term-deposit accounts to leave commercial banks for credit and financial institutions, which have not yet authorized by the central bank and other markets such as FOREX and gold. Read more

Trade Recession Continues in Iran

Feb. , 2016 Recession continued in Iran’s non-oil trade in the 11-month period to Feb. 19, latest reports released by the Customs Administration show. Although the trade balance was positive, the volume of trade was lower than the same period last year, making authorities concerned. During the review period, Iran exported $38.97 billion and imported $37.27 billion of goods. Read more

Iran's Inflation Rates for the Month of Bahman 1394 (February 2016)

Feb. , 2016 The Central Bank of Iran announced that the average inflation rate in the urban area for the 12-month period to the eleventh Iranian calendar month of Bahman (ended on Feb. 20) hit 12.6 percent. The month-over-month (M-o-M) inflation rate increased by 0.2%. Read more

Iranian Monetary Authorities Agree to Decrease Interest Rates

Feb. , 2016 As inflation has been curbed from over 40 percent to about 12 percent, the monetary authorities are moving now to help reduce the interest rates further in a move to boost the manufacturing sector. Earlier in the year the Central Bank reduced the interest rates by two percentage point, but banks and credit institutions refused to respect the decision. Read more

Iran's Min Wage in Coming Year 1395 (March 2016 - March 2017)

Feb. , 2016 Official reports show that the average expenditure of a household in urban areas exceeds 30 million rials each month. This is the fact while the minimum wage is set to be increased 10 percent in the next year’s budget law, reaching 7.83 million rials per month. The increase is even lower than inflation, which hovers around 13 percent. Read more

Iran Government Plans to Bring Big Reform

Jan 31, 2016 By the next strategic plan of the country, dubbed as the 6th Five-Year Economic Development Plan, authorities would do their best to reduce the size of the government and improve business environment, according to media reports. It seems that the incumbent administration is serious to give priority to address the economic woes in the coming years, since it has come up with ideas and plans to reduce the size of the government and budget reliance on oil revenue, cut its debt to banks and contractors, reform the bureaucratic system and push for subsidy reforms. In the meantime, the administration of President Hassan Rouhani tries to make the economy more transparent, improve the business environment, organize credit and financial institutions, pay its debt to the private sector, and pave the ground for the inflow of foreign capital. Read more

Iran’s Falling Revenue

Jan 11, 2016 With Iran’s crude oil being traded at $29, Iran’s revenue from oil sales have decreased to 31 trillion rials. The revenue is too low to cover government expenditures, given the fact that authorities should spend 34 trillion rials on cash subsidies and 100 trillion rials on the salaries of millions of employees. Read more

Iranian Government Faces Unbalanced Budget

Jan 04, 2016 Despite repeated optimistic forecasts about the economy, the Iranian government has failed to balance the budget and says it is facing a shortage of funds to pay the salaries of public employees. Read more

Iran's New Budget and Forex Rate

Dec. , 2015 Although oil prices have been plunging in the past two years and despite the fact that Iran’s oil sales have considerably been cut due to crippling economic sanctions, the Iranian currency has experienced a relatively stable situation. Yet, the foreign exchange market’s stability will be the most challenging issue the Iranian government will face in the coming year. Read more

A U-Turn in Rouhani Administration's Economic Policy

Oct , 2015 Last Thursday night, President Hassan Rouhani attended a television program, elaborating on his administration’s performance in the past two years and revealing his new plans for the next couple of years in order to improve business environment. Read more

The CBI Inflation Report

Oct , 2015 In its second monthly report, the central bank released inflation of tradable and non-tradable in Mordad after its first report of the kind in Tir, giving the signal that the bank has begun to release such reports regularly every month. Read more