The administration has reacted to the criticisms raised following the Central Bank of Iran’s announcement of 4.6 percent economic growth for the first quarter of the current Iranian calendar year, which started March 21.
The Rouhani administration has in the past year adopted a two-side policy to both counter recession and curb inflation at the same time, Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, vice president for planning and strategic supervision said on Thursday. “The administration has used a combination of both expansionary and contractionary policy to respond to the prevailing stagflation.”
“Growth in the development budget drives supply, while increase in current spending triggers demand. We have increased development budget by 12 times, compared to previous figures last year,” Nobakht added.
Economic growth in 2012/13 was -5.8 percent excluding growth for oil sector and -6.8 percent including oil growth. For 2013/14, the figure was -1.9 percent, including growth for oil sector, according to the central bank.
The new growth rate of 4.6 percent should be compared with the similar period last year, not the whole year or the year before, Nobakht asserted.
Though the announced rate is higher than the similar period last year, it still remains low, Abolfazl Akrami, CBI’s director general for economic affairs explained. “The 4.6 percent growth rate proves that the falling trend of gross domestic product (GDP) has halted and reversed. But we still have a long way to reach our growth target.”
Some critics have criticized the central bank over the past week for releasing “false” numbers. As an instance, Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam, a lawmaker, has called the CBI’s figures “fictitious” and “deceptive.”
