🔻 Iran’s economic slowdown deepened

🖋Behrang Tajoddin, Economic reporter for BBC Persian

🔻 Iran’s economic growth rate in the first quarter of 1405 fell to negative 10.8 percent. According to a quarterly report by the Statistical Center of Iran, the main factor behind this decline in output or gross domestic product was a drop of more than 35 percent in export revenue and a 26 percent decline in oil and gas extraction.

This report shows that production in other industries and mines also fell by more than five percent compared with the previous spring. Based on these figures, growth in the transportation, warehousing, and communications sector was negative 17 percent, and the wholesale and retail trade, hotels and restaurants sector was negative 3.9 percent. In contrast, the agriculture sector grew by more than two percent compared with the previous spring.

According to estimates by the Statistical Center, the impact of this economic slowdown on people has been much more severe than on the government, such that after removing the effect of inflation, people’s consumption and the private sector were four percent lower than in spring 1404, while consumption by the public sector decreased by only 1.7 percent.

The Statistical Center of Iran had also estimated that economic growth in the previous winter was negative 2.2 percent. Typically, negative economic growth over two consecutive or three consecutive quarters is considered a recession.