Page 36 - IRANRptMar20

Iran’s central bank chief says removing four zeros from rial will not cost the earth
Iran taking advantage of a government push to move away from traditional cash payments.
“All daily and routine transactions performed by end-users of all types of e-payments can be integrated into the Digipay integrated ecosystem for a seamless experience for all small payments including C2C, paying bills, account top-ups and more,” the application’s website says.
The most popular PSP in Iran is Asan Pardakht. It enables users to transfer funds from card-to-card, pay bills with the use of barcodes and QR codes and donate to charity. Asan Pardakht has a 37.26% market share in online process payments. Its application is dubbed “Ap”.
It is estimated that 2.35bn transactions worth over IRR2.5tn ($59.7bn at the government exchange rate) were processed by Iranian domestic payments network Shaparak in the Persian calendar month to August 22.
The latest monthly report published on the company’s website shows growth rates of 26.79% y/y and 10.64% y/y in volume and value, respectively.
Governor of the Central Bank of Iran, Abdolnasser Hemmati, has said removing four rial zeros from banknotes will not break the bank, according to an ICANA report published on August 6.
The Rouhani cabinet ​has given its approval to changing the denomination​ of the Iranian currency by removing four zeros while also officially renaming it “Toman." The move to make such changes has been on the cards for several years, but poor economic conditions have forced successive administrations to place the proposal on the backburner.
“The initiative does not incur additional costs as the government annually destroys and prints 700 million banknote pieces,” Hemmati said to reporters outside a parliament meeting, following questions from MPs on the plan. During the session, the CBI governor noted that by pushing ahead with the redenomination scheme to make the currency more presentable and easier to handle in calculations, the country could remove some 4bn banknotes from circulation.
“Truth be told, people no longer use the rial in their daily transactions,” he said referring to the often used colloquial expression “toman” in daily pricing. One toman equals 10 rials.
The bill for the changes now moves to the parliament where MPs will pick apart the finer details and could send it back to the cabinet for alterations.
If the bill clears the parliament without any issues, it would then head to the Guardian Council—made up of 12 jurists and parliamentarians—who check the validity of laws.
8.3 ​Stock market
Tehran stock exchange outpaces all other equity markets as locals flee inflation
Here’s a handy question for the next quiz in a Square Mile or Wall Street drinkery: which stock exchange has outpaced all other global equity markets in the past 12 months? Well, that would be the Tehran bourse, up 73% in local currency terms over the past 12 months as tracked by Bloomberg.
Iran’s stock market, asset managers say, has served as a haven from the surging inflation brought on by the crushing sanctions attack the US has waged against the Islamic Republic’s economy over the past year.
The official annual inflation rate was measured at almost 43% in September and, with local banks unable to bring in competitive interest rates, Iranians
36​ IRAN Country Report​ March 2020 www.intellinews.com