Daily praises 2014, as year of economic progress

Tehran, Dec 29, IRNA - ˈIran Dailyˈ on Monday praised the policies of President Hassan Rouhaniˈs administration over the past year for raising the countryˈs falling economy into a flourishing one. The English-language paper was commenting on the countryˈs economic growth rate at the beginning of 2014, wherein global financial institutes such as International Monetary Fund had predicted that Iran’s economic growth rate will reach two percent while the inflation rate will decline to 17 percent. This is while at the end of the year, the government announced that a GDP of four percent and the inflation rate of below 17 percent. Therefore the figures showed that Iran’s economy has outdone forecasts of international institutes and performed better than expected. Undoubtedly, the government assumed office at a time the country was grappling with numerous economic problems, but it took appropriate measures and tried to remove the obstacles, the paper said in its Opinion column. Rouhani found that the most dangerous economic ill is inflation and his government has tried to contain it, it noted. We should remember that the inflation rate was more than 40 percent and the economic growth was negative when Rouhani took office in August 2013. We can say that the government’s contractionary policies coupled with the high expectations of the people about the future of the country have contained the spiraling inflation, added the daily. Controlling the exchange market and bringing the economy back on growth track were also among the measures taken by the government. Given these measures, the unemployment rate also decreased during this period. The government also tried to shrink itself and manage the budget within the framework of Vision 1404 (2025) which predicted an 8-percent economic growth and a 10-percent inflation rate, although no plans of the vision had been implemented during the tenure of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. To revive the economy, we need to continue these policies for at least a four- or five-year period to implement the targets of Vision 1404, it said. If the government continues its contractionary policies and prevents fluctuations in the hard currency market, we can predict a positive outlook for 2015, concluded the paper./end