Until a few months ago, Farzaneh bought meat once a week. However, these days, while prices continue to climb in Iran, this assistant in a dental office in Tehran only buys them once every two months. "Meat is twice as expensive today compared to last year. Same for taxi rides (collective), the bus and the rents. We will soon be forced to move to a smaller and cheaper apartment ”, explains this 35-year-old woman who lives in a dormitory town 30 kilometers from the capital with her retired father and mother. These days, she's busy, no matter what, protecting her cell phone that she bought seven years ago from theft and breakage. "I know that if something happens to him today, I will be absolutely unable to buy a new one", she slips.
For several months, the rial, the Iranian currency, has not stopped plummeting against foreign currencies. Its devaluation accelerated on June 19 after the resolution – the first since 2012 – of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) calling Iran to order.
According to the organization, Tehran refuses to inspect two sites suspected of having harbored undeclared nuclear activities in the past. On this Monday, June 29, 1 euro is bought for 210,000 rials (a record), against 137,000 a year ago, a devaluation of 54%.
Declining oil revenues
Suffering from long-standing mismanagement and rampant corruption, the local economy has been strangled since August 2018 by the return of US sanctions. These were triggered following Washington's unilateral exit from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. For nearly two years, the Islamic Republic has struggled to sell its oil, its primary source of income.
According to its vice-president, Eshagh Jahangiri, between March 2019 and March 2020 – the last Iranian year -, Iran sold only the equivalent of "$ 8 billion (7.09 billion euros) of oil, against 100 billion the years before ", because of the American embargo. Bank transactions between the country and foreign banks have become almost impossible, to the point that the president, Hassan Rohani, has publicly asked the central bank to work to repatriate foreign currency assets blocked abroad.
Farzaneh is far from an isolated case in his efforts to cut family expenses. The Covid-19 epidemic that hit Iran hard – the official death toll is 10,500 today, an underestimated figure according to doctors consulted by The world – further complicates its task. Since March until recently, certain sectors of the national economy have been forced to shut down for weeks on end. Farzaneh, for example, did not work for three months. "We only had my father's retirement to live. We notably reduced our consumption of fruit and started to make bread at home ”, she says. Now she only buys Indian rice, which is cheaper than local produce.
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