Page 4 - IRANRptFeb20
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 1.0 ​Executive summary
         Iran’s economy has been battered by US sanctions since Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the nuclear deal in May 2018 and switched back to a heavy sanctions regime. The Iranian rial (IRR) has dropped around fourfold against major currencies.
In the ​January 2020 edition of its Global Economic Prospects report​ released on January 9, ​the World Bank estimates that Iranian GDP contracted by as much as 8.7% in 2019,​ a year that saw the Trump administration gradually introduce tougher and tougher sanctions against Tehran including a drive to squeeze all Iranian oil off world export markets. In the June 2019 edition of the report, the international financial institution ​only foresaw a contraction of 4.5%.
In further bad news for Iran, while​ the World Bank six months ago was counting with a resumption of Iranian growth in 2020 to 0.9%, ​it now sees stagnation of 0.0%​.​ And that figure, it added, “assumes that the impact of sanctions tapers somewhat”. Whether that tapering occurs may well depend on whether US President Donald Trump regards it as in his interests as his campaign to get re-elected in November ramps up.
In a section on fiscal challenges faced by economies, the latest World Bank Global Economic Prospects report noted that Iran is a country where subsidies for products subject to price controls, such as petroleum, amount to a large portion of government expenditures that exceeds 10% of GDP.
Iranian GDP in 2018 shrank by 4.9% following growth of 3.8% in 2017.
The effects of the US throttling of Iran’s economy pushed Iranian inflation from about 10% in mid-2018 to more than 50% in mid-2019, partly reflecting the earlier severe depreciation of the Iranian rial (IRR) in the unofficial parallel market, but it subsided in late 2019 to below 30%. ​The IMF forecasts it will be 35.7% this year.
After months of gradual steps to reduce compliance with the nuclear deal, Iran said on January 6—days after the US drone assassination of second most powerful Iranian official Major General Qasem Soleimani and with Iranian officials also angry that Europe had still done nothing of consequence to protect Iran’s economy from the sanctions-led “economic war” unleashed against the Islamic Republic by Trump—that it would scrap the limits on enriching uranium agreed in the accord.
Violations of the JCPOA can lead to the reimposing of UN sanctions lifted under the 2015 deal.
Separately on February 4, Iran’s civil aviation authority said it would keep working with other countries investigating the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane just outside Tehran early last month by an Iranian missile battery. It called on all parties to avoid politicising the issue.
Iran, after three days of denials, eventually admitted its armed forces fired missiles at the plane by mistake while on high alert hours after they had fired at US targets in Iraq in retaliation for the US strike that killed Soleimani.
 4​ IRAN Country Report​ February 2020 www.intellinews.com
 






















































































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