Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran supports the formation of a government in neighboring Afghanistan, representing the people of all political groups and factions.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran supports the formation of a government in neighboring Afghanistan, representing the people of all political groups and factions.
Tehran is “likely” to see a return of coronavirus restrictive measures next week, following reports of a surge in cases and hospitalizations across the capital, a member of the province’s coronavirus headquarters said on Monday.
Iran’s permanent representative to Vienna-based international organizations said a recent law passed by the Iranian Parliament to counter unilateral US sanctions against the country was a strategic reaction to anti-Iran measures taken by the administration of former US president, Donald Trump.
American officials’ remarks about the 2015 nuclear deal, whether positive or negative, do not matter to Iran as it is waiting for the United States’ practical and effective measures to take proportionate action, a senior diplomat said.
Bandar Abbas Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Persian Gulf Supply and Development Company-- a subsidiary of the Iranian Mines & Mining Industries Development & Renovation Organization (IMIDRO)-- signed a contract on Sunday as per which the former will supply the latter an estimated 110,000 cubic meters of recycled water a day.
Amin Qasmi, managing director of Hormozgan Water and Wastewater Company and Shahrouz Shojaee, head of PGSDC, signed the agreement, IRNA reported.
PGSDC is a consortium of water-intensive industries in the Persian Gulf Special Economic Zone in the province, some of which are Hormozgan, Maad Koush, Kaveh and Saba steel companies, Almahdi Aluminum complex as well as Bandar Abbas Oil Refinery.
Oil prices edged higher on Monday after a weak start, holding on to the past three months of gains, although patchy coronavirus vaccine rollouts, new infections and the discovery of new variants are keeping a lid on prices.
At least 3% of petroleum revenues should be earmarked for expanding infrastructure in oil-producing provinces namely Khuzestan and Bushehr, but in practice much less has been allocated to these regions in the last 40 years, the oil minister said.
“We are calling for legislation to allocate a bigger proportion of oil revenues for infrastructure development in these provinces or else they will continue to lag behind forever,” Bijan Namdar Zanganeh was quoted as saying by ISNA.
Investments have been made in Khuzestan over the past decades but apparently are not enough. The oil-rich region has been grappling with insurmountable problems, especially in water, wastewater and power sectors, he concurred.
Dismissing unfounded claims that some provinces including Isfahan receive more petrodollars, he noted that funds disbursed for Khuzestan in south Iran has been more than central provinces, but the oil-rich region is half as developed as other areas due to numerous problems.
A silo with a wheat storage capacity of 30,000 tons was launched in the southern Khuzestan Province’s Hamidiyeh County on Sunday in a ceremony attended by Agriculture Minister Kazem Khavazi.
“The private sector has invested 150 billion rials [$608,500] for the construction of this silo,” director general of Grain Affairs and Commercial Services Department of Khuzestan’s Agricultural Organization, Omid Jahan-Najadiyan, was quoted as saying by IRNA.
When the silo comes on stream, he added, the province’s total wheat storage capacity will reach 1.44 million tons, which is more than Khuzestan’s annual wheat yield.
Khuzestan is Iran’s biggest producer of wheat.
The Government Trading Corporation of Iran plans to purchase 10 million tons of wheat from local farmers at guaranteed prices in the current crop year (Sept. 2020-21).
Iran exported 114,000 tons of seafood worth $400 million in the 10-month period to Jan. 19, indicating a 4% rise in weight and a 6% increase in value compared with the same period of the year before, says Isa Golshahi, an official with Iran Fisheries Organization.
“With the opening of two dried fish and small dried fish producing plants this year [started March 2020], another item was added to the country’s export basket. A total of 18,000 tons of dried fish worth $18 million were exported over the period. Oman, Myanmar and Malaysia are new export destinations of Iranian seafood this year,” he was quoted as saying by IRNA.
Exports of non-halal fish, including cutlass fish, squid and catfish, hit 29,000 tons worth $73 million in the 10-month period and exports of farmed shrimp reached 14,500 tons.
The population of the unemployed in Iran currently stands at 2.4 million, 40% of whom are university graduates, according to the director general of Employment and Policymaking Department of the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare.
“Over the past year, some one million people were made redundant. More than 730,000 of these are receiving unemployment insurance,” Alaeddin Azvaji was also quoted as saying by Mehr News Agency.
Every year, the official added, between 600,000 and 700,000 employment seekers enter the job market.
“The government has been creating around 450,000 jobs per year since the fiscal 2017-18,” he said.
A recent survey conducted by the Social Security Organization’s Research Institute among over 700,000 applicants of unemployment insurance benefits shows 61.9% of them have been the head of household and 27.1% lived in families with another wage earner.
According to Rouzbeh Kerdouni, the head of the institute, 40.4% of the respondents were women and 59.6% were men.
The Purchasing Managers’ Index for the retail sector was registered at 45.12 in the month ending Dec. 20, 2020, to signal a 26.36% improvement compared with previous month’s reading of 35.71.
The announcement was made by the Economy and Planning Department of Iran Chamber of Guilds. The department is measuring retail PMI, known by its Farsi acronym Shamekh, since the month ending May 20, 2020.
A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector and below 50 indicates contraction. Traders watch these surveys closely as purchasing managers usually have early access to data about their company’s performance, which can be a leading indicator of overall economic performance.
A higher than expected reading should be taken as a positive sign for businesspeople while a lower than expected reading should be taken as negative.
Prospective home-buyers can now take out loans under Housing Saving Account mortgage loan on homes up to 25 years old, says Mahmoud Shayan, the managing director of Bank Maskan, the state agent bank of housing sector.
Formerly, Bank Maskan’s HSA loans were only extended to homes of 20 years or less.
“The new measure will improve the buying power of loan applicants, thanks to the higher number of homes not older than 25 and their relatively cheaper prices compared with new homes,” he was quoted as saying by Hibna.
By the end of the ninth Iranian month (on Dec.20), banks held 71 quadrillion rials ($289.8 billion) in assets, up 42.7% YOY and 31% compared to the beginning of the current fiscal year last March.
Foreign assets of banks were 45.9% higher YOY and 30.3% compared to the last month of previous fiscal to reach 15,089 trillion rials ($61.58b) by December 20, the Central Bank of Iran said Monday.
Non-governmental sectors owed 21,219.8 trillion rials ($ 86.6 b) to banks by the end of the third quarter, an annual rise of 47.4%.
The Central Bank of Iran trying to reduce interbank interest rates in the hope of realizing its inflation target, the governor Abdolnasser Hemmati said.
An inflation target of ±22% has been set by the CBI for the first fiscal quarter (March 20-June 21- 2021).
Speaking at state TV late on Sunday, Hemmati said the interbank rate must be cut to 18% from the present 20%.
He said decline in interbank rate is essential to realize the inflation target. "When an inflation target is set, it means that the central bank must consider some issues. One is the interbank interest rate that has to cut to around 18%," he was quoted as saying by IBENA, the news agency affiliated to the Monetary and Banking Research Institute.
Foreign exchange rates dropped Monday in Tehran after the central bank governor on state TV forecast much lower currency prices that triggered panic selling.
After rallying for three consecutive sessions the dollar lost 1.5% in the free market to fetch 241,000 rials. The euro was close by losing 1.4% or 4,000 rials to reach 292,810 rials, and the UK pound sterling was worth 332,221 rials down about 1% compared with a previous session. The UAE dirham was quoted at 66,800 rials – 1.4% lower than Sunday.
Most major market indicators dropped in Tehran's share market Monday driven by excessive offers of large cap stocks.
The market cap-weighted index of Tehran Stock Exchange, TEDPIX lost 17,427 points or 1.39% for the day to end trading at 1,233,614.
Many penny stocks and small caps performed comparably better as seen in smaller losses for the equal-weighted index. Down 0.44%, the index gives the same weight to all shares irrespective of their market cap.
The hand of nature, rain and wind, has pushed away the suffocating blanket of smog that had covered Tehran, making air in January a tad cleaner compared to the previous month.
Based on the data released by Tehran Air Quality Control Company, although the skies were brighter compared to a month earlier, Tehran residents breathed higher doses of toxic emissions in January 2021 compared to the same month in 2020.
A close analysis of Air Quality Index during the period makes this very clear. AQI is used by government agencies to announce the prevailing level of air pollution, or how polluted it is forecast to become.
The index categorizes conditions dictated by a measure of polluting matters into good (0-50), moderate (51-100), unhealthy for sensitive groups (101-150), unhealthy (151-200), very unhealthy (201-300) and hazardous (301-500).
In January, people in Tehran did not see clear blue skies even for a single day, while the city recorded moderate status for 10 days, as the index hovered between 51 and 100.
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