Page 13 - IRANRptDec21

Iran improves position on Global Innovation Index
Iran’s Gini Index worsens to 0.4006
estimated 4.99% in 2020 alone. Inflation in the country has spiked and petroleum exports have plummeted, the impact of which has likely been exacerbated by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown imposed to control the disease. The effects of these concrete measures of economic pain are reflected in Iranians' negative views of their economies and job markets.
“These woes likely helped sour Iranians on the country's former President Hassan Rouhani, who had a 32% job approval rate in the last survey before he left office. Iranians are substantially more optimistic about Raisi. However, that optimism is likely to fade if he cannot turn the country's economy around—a task that is likely to prove difficult the longer stringent U.S. and other international sanctions remain in place. Recent increases in oil prices around the globe may provide some level of cushioning for the new government.”
Iran has improved its position on the Global Innovation Index (GII). The 2021 edition of the global ranking is dedicated to the development of innovations in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, taking into account how economies have coped with online development during the prolonged difficulties it has caused.
Iran has been ranked in 60th place. That bumped it up a handful of places and classified the country as one of the biggest gainers in its region in the past 12 months.
Iran also ranked 13th among the middle-and upper-middle-income countries and second in the Central and South Asia grouping, ahead of other regional growth markets including Uzbekistan at 86th and Kazakhstan at 79th place. Iran placed ahead of other regional players, including Armenia and Pakistan, in terms of its innovation output performance, but behind countries including Ukraine and Bulgaria.
Iran and Brazil were described by the GII as 2021 outperformers. But the report noted how despite Iran’s improvement, the country remained “stubbornly a long distance behind” in the “geography of global innovation category.”
Iran’s Gini Index worsened to 0.4006 in the last fiscal year (March 2020 to March 2021) from the previous year’s 0.3992, Persian-language daily Shargh has reported, citing the Statistical Centre of Iran (SCI).
The Gini index, or Gini coefficient, was devised by Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1912. It is usually referred to as the most popular measure of socioeconomic inequality, particularly in terms of income and wealth distribution.
The Gini index ranks income inequality on a scale of zero, which equates to no inequality, to one, which indicates the maximum level of inequality. The closer the number is to one, the more wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer people and the bigger the income disparity.
Given the way the scale is constructed, a modest-sounding difference in the Gini ratio actually implies a wide difference in inequality.
13 IRAN Country Report December 2021 www.intellinews.com