{"id":75420,"date":"2019-06-06T09:24:09","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T14:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/persian-heritage.com\/wordpress\/?p=75420"},"modified":"2019-06-06T09:24:09","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T14:24:09","slug":"world-bank-iran-likely-to-suffer-worse-recession-than-previously-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2019\/06\/06\/world-bank-iran-likely-to-suffer-worse-recession-than-previously-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"World Bank: Iran Likely to Suffer Worse Recession Than Previously Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"VOA – <\/em>WASHINGTON \u2014The World Bank says Iran is likely to experience an even worse recession this year than previously thought, as U.S. sanctions largely choke off oil exports that have been Tehran\u2019s main revenue source. In its latest Global Economic Prospects report<\/a> published Wednesday, the Washington-based institution that provides loans to countries said it expects Iran\u2019s Gross Domestic Product to shrink by 4.5% this year, a steeper contraction than its earlier estimate of negative 3.6% GDP growth for 2019. \u201cThe oil industry is an important part of Iran\u2019s economy, and its oil production is clearly going to drop because of the new U.S. sanctions,\u201d said Patrick Clawson, research director for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in a VOA Persian interview on Wednesday.<\/div>\n

U.S. economist Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore told VOA Persian in another Wednesday interview that Iran\u2019s internal economic problems also are to blame for its worsening recession. \u201cIran is very corrupt, has very little economic freedom, and it\u2019s hard to start a business there because Iran is not really a free market or liberal economy,\u201d Hanke said.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Transparency International, a Berlin-based civil society organization that monitors global corruption, has ranked Iran 138 out of 180 countries in its Corruption Perceptions Index<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s other low global economic rankings include 155 out of 180 nations in the Economic Freedom Index<\/a> of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy institute, and 128 out of 190 governments in the World Bank\u2019s Ease of Doing Business index<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration imposed a total, unilateral ban on Iranian oil exports on May 2 as part of its campaign of \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d on Iran to negotiate an end to its perceived malign behaviors. It had issued sanctions waivers to eight of Iran\u2019s oil customers in November to allow them to keep importing Iranian crude for six months, but later said it would not renew those waivers and would require those customers to reduce such imports to zero.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

The World Bank\u2019s new report also said Iran\u2019s year-on-year inflation rate has risen sharply from about 10% in the middle of last year to about 52% in April. It said the depreciation of Iran\u2019s rial since May 2018, when the U.S. announced it would re-impose sanctions on Iran, has contributed to the rising inflation. The rial\u2019s slump versus the dollar in Iran\u2019s unofficial currency market has made dollar-denominated imports more expensive for Iranians.<\/p>\n

Clawson said Iran’s inflation is high primarily because it is relying on printing money to finance its spending. \u201cThe Iranian government is not bringing in enough revenue to pay for its expenses, so it is borrowing money from the banking system to cover the difference, and that is driving inflation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hanke, who says he is the only economist outside Iran to measure its inflation with high frequency, told VOA Persian that he calculated Iran\u2019s actual inflation rate to be 113% on Wednesday, much higher than the World Bank\u2019s latest reading.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

U.S. economist Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore told VOA Persian in another Wednesday interview that Iran\u2019s internal economic problems also are to blame for its worsening recession. \u201cIran is very corrupt, has very little economic freedom, and it\u2019s hard to start a business there because Iran is not really a free market or liberal economy,\u201d Hanke said.<\/p>\n

Transparency International, a Berlin-based civil society organization that monitors global corruption, has ranked Iran 138 out of 180 countries in its Corruption Perceptions Index<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s other low global economic rankings include 155 out of 180 nations in the Economic Freedom Index<\/a> of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy institute, and 128 out of 190 governments in the World Bank\u2019s Ease of Doing Business index<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

The World Bank\u2019s projection of a 4.5% contraction in Iran\u2019s GDP this year is not as bad as the 6% contraction predicted by the International Monetary Fund, another global lending agency, in its latest report<\/a> from April. The World Bank also said it expects economic growth in Iran to return next year \u201cas the impact of U.S. sanctions tapers off and as inflation stabilizes.\u201d It projected a 0.9% rise in Iran\u2019s GDP for 2020.<\/p>\n

Hanke declined to make his own predictions for Iran\u2019s economic performance, saying any forecasts for a nation such as Iran are problematic because they rely on guesswork.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA – WASHINGTON \u2014The World Bank says Iran is likely to experience an even worse recession this year than previously thought, as U.S. sanctions largely choke off oil exports that have been Tehran\u2019s main revenue source. In its latest Global Economic Prospects report published Wednesday, the Washington-based institution that provides loans to countries said it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}