MEK: Iranian Regime’s Attempts to Fix Economy will Only Make it Worse.

The Coronavirus outbreak in Iran is just the latest in a long list of crises that the Iranian regime has been battling against. More than 42,400 people have died according to the latest figures announced by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI / MEK Iran).

The Iranian regime has been fighting crisis after crisis in recent years. The economic crisis is an ongoing one. However, in recent weeks, President Hassan Rouhani has been speaking about economic success with regards to the rise of the Tehran Stock Exchange.

However, from the outside, it is very difficult to see any indicators of success when it comes to Iran’s economy because the country’s economic indicators are all negative. The total stock index on the stock exchange is something that cannot be explained rationally given that it has grown by 80 percent.

The rate of inflation in Iran is between 45 and 50 percent and the economic growth rate remains below seven percent. Millions of people have lost their jobs in Iran since the beginning of the health crisis and this number is set to at least double. There are no foreign investments. Income from oil is practically at zero. This should point to the crash of the stock market. This huge spike cannot be explained.

The government in Iran is selling shares of companies owned by the state and it is selling government assets on the stock market. The budget defect of around 1,500 trillion tomans is meaning that the government will have to sell trillions of government bonds and dozens of more trillions in currency.

A state-run publication described the government as “resorting to selling futures” as a way of dealing with the dire financial situation.

For decades, the regime has been plundering the nation’s wealth. A member of the Expediency Council recently said that the government is continuing its plundering by using “the public-private partnership to plunder all the assets of the nation, including schools, hospitals, stadiums, universities, etc., whether they have been completed or under construction”.

He explained that the Director-General or Minister can offer a huge discount to deprived sectors – up to 80 percent, and up to 50 percent for other sectors. Tavakoli said that the major buyers have links with the regime and are often already owners of other massive industries that they obtained for very low costs. He gave the example of the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Company that was sold for a down payment of 60 billion rials more than four years ago. The company came with more than 5,000 employees and 24,000 hectares of agricultural land.

It is the people of Iran that are being defrauded with schemes such as these. Small business owners are unable to keep afloat because of rising inflation that is currently at around 40 percent. The government’s decision to slash interest rates from 25 to 12 percent has made little or no difference to many small business owners.

All the government in Iran is doing is putting a band-aid on the problems the economy is facing. It is not going to help in the long term. The problems are going to be exacerbated in the long term because of the government’s current measures.

With the health crisis, the economic crisis, and the unemployment crisis worsening with every day that passes, the regime is digging its own grave.