Mohammad-Reza Farzin, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), held a meeting with Jihad Azour, the Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC during which he pointed to an improvement in the economic indicators in Iran in the past 2 years despite the intensfied illegitimate US sanctions.

He stated that Iran’s economy has been growing in all economic sectors with positive growth rates of 4.4% and 3.7%, respectively in the last 2 years and added that “in 2021-2022 (the year1401 in the Iranian calendar,) the oil sector with 10% increase and the industry sector with 4.8% increase witnessed the highest growth rate in Iran’s economic sectors. Also, during that period, the negative growth rate of fixed capital formation increased to a positive growth rate of 5.9%, including 15.9% increase in the field of machinery and 2.1% in the construction sector.”

The CBI governor further said that during he above-mentioned period, the private sector consumption expenses with 5% growth and public sector consumption expenses with a negative growth rate of 4.4% were the most important factors behind GDP growth.

“These developments show the glimmers of hope in the improvement of Iran’s economy in the real sectors, although in the financial sector we were faced with the phenomenon of uncertainty and fear in the market and the growth of liquidity, and inflation rates were higher than 40% for 3 consecutive years,” he further asserted.

He further pointed out that “Currently, Iran has $4.8 billion SDR (Special Drawing Rights) as an international reserve asset created by the IMF(equivalent to %6.7 billion dollars), which can be used quickly and with the least necessary administrative procedures to help further improve its economic situation.”

Farzin called on the IMF to support the strengthening of international banking programs for the expansion of economic relations and trade exchanges with countries.

The International Monetary Fund recently published a report in its statistical database pointing to an increase of $141 billion dollars in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s GDP in 2022, introducing Iran’s economy as the 22nd largest economy in the world this year (2023).

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