Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif set off for Beijing on Friday to meet his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, as part of close consultations between the two countries.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif set off for Beijing on Friday to meet his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, as part of close consultations between the two countries.
The great classical Iranian composer and singer Mohammad Reza Shajarian passed away at a hospital in Tehran on Thursday at the age of 80 after a years-long battle with kidney cancer.
Iran logged 210 overnight deaths due to the coronavirus pandemic on Friday, which pushed the national toll past the 28,000 mark, a health official said.
European Union foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, underlined the need to keep the 2015 nuclear deal in place since engagement with Iran remains in EU’s “vital strategic interest.”
Effective programs have been implemented to revive the troubled Urmia Lake and environment officials in East and West Azarbaijan province hope Iran’s largest inland body of water should reach its ecological level (1,274 meters above sea level) by 2025.
According to IRNA, the first step to recover the dying lake was taken in 2013 when the Urmia Lake Restoration Program (ULRP) was announced and 27 plans were launched to resolve the problem of salt storms around the lake that had endangered the livelihood of six million people in a 100-kilometer radius by early 2015.
Some of the schemes included interbasin water transfer, curbing water consumption in the agro sector, increasing water flow to the lake and using wastewater by upholding environmental standards.
According to a report by the Iran Water Resources Management Company (subsidiary of the Energy Ministry), seven years since the action plans were launched most are either complete or in the final stages.
World oil demand will plateau in the late 2030s and could by then have begun to decline, OPEC said on Thursday, in a major shift for the producer group that reflects the lasting impact of the coronavirus crisis on the economy and consumer habits.
The average volume of water used to produce electricity in Besat Combined-Cycle Power Plant in south Tehran is 45 times above other power stations in the capital.
According to Barq News, the 52-year old facility consumes a whopping 18 million liters of water per day (18,000 cubic meters/d) to generate 1.2 billion kilowatt a year, accounting for a paltry 0.4% of the total annual national electricity output which now is 300 billion kWh.
The rapidly depleting water is extracted from six deep water wells as water shortages continue to pose a serious risk to the overcrowded capital.
The ageing plant uses as much water as 70,000 people in the capital consume in a day. Per capita water consumption in Tehran is 250 liters a day.
The overall Purchasing Managers’ Index, known by its Farsi acronym Shamekh, for the economy settled at 46.86 in the month ending Sept. 21 from 46.43 in the month ending Aug. 21, indicating 0.43 points or 0.93% improvement.
A report by the Statistics and Economic Analysis Center of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture, the sponsor and coordinator of the survey, indicates that despite the slight improvement, problems associated with raw material inventory have worsened over the month.
The headline PMI is a number from 0 to 100, such that over 50 shows an economic expansion when compared with the previous month. A PMI reading under 50 indicates contraction and a reading of 50 implies no change.
Iran’s unemployment rate, the proportion of jobless population of ages 15 and above, stood at 9.5% in the second quarter of the current Iranian year (June 21-Sept. 21), indicating a 1% decline compared with the same period of last year.
The Statistical Center of Iran put Q1 labor force participation rate—the proportion of the population of ages 15 and above that is economically active either employed or looking for job—at 41.8%, registering a 3.1% decrease year-on-year.
Employment is defined as persons of working age engaged in any activity to produce goods or provide services for pay or profit, whether at work during the reference period or not at work due to a temporary absence from a job, or to working-time arrangement.
The total number of Q2 employed population was 23.54 million, down 1.21 million compared with the same quarter of last Iranian year.
The services sector employed 48.1% of the Iranian employed population, whereas industrial and agricultural sectors provided 33.4% and 18.5% of jobs respectively.
Airlines will only be allowed to sell tickets for up to 60% of plane’s total seating capacity as of Oct. 22, Maqsoud Asadi-Samani, secretary of the Association of Iranian Airlines, said on Monday.
As per the decision of National Coronavirus Headquarters on new measures to prevent the further transmission of Covid-19, all types of aircraft need to observe social distancing by operating at a fraction of their passenger capacity.
In addition to the new measure, the rise in foreign currency exchange rates has increased airlines’ expenses and would leave them with no choice but to raise their fares, Fars News Agency reported.
Noting that the Central Bank of Iran did not provide airlines with foreign currency from the so-called secondary FX market, known by its Persian name Nima, Asadi-Samani said, “Airlines had to meet their forex needs at free market rates to import aircraft spare parts last year.”
The average goods and services Consumer Price Index of the communications sector in the 12-month period ending Sept. 21, which marks the end of the sixth Iranian month, increased by 6.2% compared with the previous year’s corresponding period—the lowest among 12 groups of the basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households.
The CPI of the group stood at 170.9 in the month, indicating a 2.9% growth compared with the month before, according to the Statistical Center of Iran.
The Supreme Audit Court of Iran, the supervisory arm of the parliament, issued a ruling reversing a decision by the Iranian Privatization Organization two years ago to divest Moghan Agro Industrial & Animal Husbandry Company.
The ruling, published by Mehr News Agency, discloses wrongdoings and abuse by members of an ad hoc IPO committee in charge of the divestment.
The misprision, among other things, includes undervaluing the property value. Over the past few years, the IPO, under its previous management, came under mounting criticism over rampant corruption in handling divestment schemes.
Bond auctions held Tuesdays by the Central Bank of Iran concluded with none of the legal or individual investors showing interest in the government bonds.
As per an earlier announcement, there were government bonds worth 67 trillion rials ($230 million) on offer on October 6 in the 19th auction of its kind.
The government has launched a series of bond auctions since May to sell Islamic bonds to banks and investment companies plus investors in the stock market.
New exchange rates should be used by banks as the basis for converting their forex debt and assets into rial, the Central Bank of Iran said Thursday.
As per a CBI bylaw, each euro will be equal to 129,000 rials and the US dollar will be worth 110,000 rials (or equivalent in other currencies).
As a matter of policy, the CBI regularly updates parity rates with the national currency to be used by lenders as the basis for preparing their financial statements.
Governor of the Central Bank of Iran Abdolnasser Hemmati, said Thursday that the new US sanctions against Iranian banks are yet another blow to the few remaining channels to pay for food and medicine, describing the move as another political stunt.
The US Treasury Department on Thursday imposed fresh sanctions against 18 Iranian banks aiming to totally cut off the country from the world's financial system and choking off the already shrunk government revenues.
“Some of these banks transfer money for food and pharmaceuticals and foreign lenders were previously given waivers and permits to work with them,” Hemmati said in a press release published on the CBI website.
He described the new move as a propaganda designed more “for political ends inside the United States than having economic impact on Iran’s economy”.
Donald Trump’s new desperation and economic pressure on Tehran comes barely three weeks ahead of the US presidential election.
To expand startup and knowledge-based ecosystems, the Presidential Office for Science and Technology has launched innovation factories in two Iranian cities.
Innovation factory projects in Mashhad, the provincial center of Khorasan Razavi, and Zanjan in the namesake province have recently come on stream, the vice presidential office’s website Isti.ir reported.
Called Vita, the innovation factory in the shrine city of Mashhad was launched by Vice President for Science and Technology Sorena Sattari during a videoconference late last week. The center specializes in the restoration of medical equipment and clinical devices.
The project is financed by Sharif University of Technology in Tehran and Astan Quds Razavi, a charitable organization that manages economic enterprises endowed to the holy shrine of Imam Reza (PBUH), the eighth Shia Imam.
Adjacent to Ferdowsi University in Mashhad, the former soft drinks factory covering a 15,000-square meter area is also to be repurposed into a tech center.
Reportedly, the overhaul of medical devices, such as ventilators, CT scan machines and air purifiers, can help save $420 million.
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