Iran’s Rial Rebounds 20% : CBI Chief

Tehran, Oct 14, IRNA – Governor of Central Bank of Iran Valiollah Seif said Saturday the country’s rial which had lost its dollar value in 12 months rose back 20 percent in recent months after the new government took office in August, 2013. In an interview with the US-based news TV channel Bloomberg, Seif said the country is not to pursue the policies introduced by the former government. He said the new Iranian government has agreed to segregate monetary and fiscal policies from each other, saying the move will help control liquidity and bring the inflation rate down. While the central bank is trying to alleviate the effects of sanctions, analysts at Eurasia Group and the Economist Intelligent Unit have said Seif can resist government policies to provide cheap credit, a policy introduced by former Iranian government, which weakened the nation’s banks, Bloomberg reported. “The foreign-exchange market is relatively stable,” Bloomberg quoted the CBI chief. “Expansionary monetary and fiscal policies will not help the growth.” Seif, heading a high-ranking delegation is in Washington to attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG.) As Bloomberg said, the CBI chief predicted that economic growth would be flat in the current year that ends in March, compared to a contraction of 5.4 percent in the previous year. The economy may grow 3 percent in new Iranian year starting March 2014, he said./end