President Complains About Negative Attitude Against His Govt

Tehran, July 23, IRNA – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday complained about negative attitude against his government. Speaking to a group of officials meeting Supreme Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Ahmadinejad presented an outline of his governments eight-year performance and said he considers himself indebted to Islamic Revolution. The president said a series of factors have been effecting his governments performance, including global economic crisis and fall in oil prices. He said the global economic crisis started in the US since 2007, spreading to the world fast. Global economy has not been in a proper condition since 2008 to the extent that the world economic growth in 2009 reached minus 0.6 percent, something unprecedented in the past 80 years. Western countries tried to inject several thousand billion dollars to thwart recession and shift the recession to other countries and to global economy. However, the average annual growth in global economy decreased to 2.9 percent on the average in the years 2008-12 from 4.24 percent on the average in 2000-08. Domestically, harsh decline in oil prices in 2009 due to fall in global economic growth speedily affected industries and energy sectors, subsequently leading to tangible fall in the TEPIX and volume of stock exchanges. The TEPIX fell to about 8000 from about 12000 points. World trade growth rate fell to 3.1 percent in 2008 and -10.6 percent in 2009 from 7.2 percent in the 2000-07 period. Foreign direct investment worldwide fell to about 1500 billion dollars (down by about 30 percent) in 2011 from about 2000 billion dollars in 2007. It is expected that it would not reach the former figure in 2014 too. General global economic condition in the years has been inappropriate and the general indices are falling. The other factor influencing Iran's economy in the years was economic sanctions, said the president, adding that of course, after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 Iranian nation has always been under foreign pressure, especially that by the US government. But clearly, the scale and magnitude of the pressure has been unprecedented over the past years. A series of sanctions were imposed against Iran. It would be enough to compare it to D'Amato Act sanctions in the 1990s. He said Central Bank of Iran, banks, the insurance, oil, petrochemical, energy and transportation sectors, precious metals, technological parts, the technical and engineering services were subject to the sanctions. Western governments call the sanctions smart and crippling. Instant and online control of all measures in Iran's external economy and showing speedy reaction to the moves were among measures they adopted. He said collection of the factors caused at least 50 percent decrease in oil sales and income, trade barriers and limited foreign exchange transfer. Obviously, without taking the sanctions into consideration, one can not have a proper analysis of Iran's economy especially in the years 2011-12, he noted. Among other problems, said the president, were draught, political tension, less supervision, banking intricacies and so on. The outgoing government got dlrs750 billion oil revenues during the past eight years, an unprecedented income in Iranian history./end