IRANIAN ECONOMY
IN BOTTLENECK
Before the
presidential elections, the President Ahmadi-Nejad made
promises for “the provision of economic aid to the low
income circles.” However, he has not taken any concrete
steps to realize these promises up to now. As soon as he
came to power, there has been a rise in the prices of
everything including sugar, flour and petrol, and it has
been more difficult to earn one’s living. More than 10
million people live “under the line of poverty.” This
situation causes serious uneasiness among the people and
the precautions taken do not suffice the removal of this
uneasiness.
In parallel with
the directions of the President; a short while ago
decisions were taken to provide credit up to 3 million
Tumen to the civil servants who do not own a house or
live in a rented place, to rent houses for those who do
not own a house, to provide money for trousseau to the
girls at the proper age for marriage, to provide
marriage assistance to the men who are going to get
married and who have financial difficulty. Despite these
decisions have been put into effect, nobody has
benefited from them yet.
While the people
expect economic improvement, at the end of late May, the
tax rates for the imported textile products such as
cloth, ready made clothes have increased by 7 %, and the
tax rates for the electrical house goods have increased
by 60%. Now, it is worried that these rises in prices
will decrease the income of the tradesmen who are doing
small scale business rather than supporting the local
production. Meanwhile, due to cutting the state funds,
the administrative boards of the petrochemical and pipe
factories in the Asuliye have had to fire 14 thousand
employees. Finally, with the removal of the job security
law, the discontent has reached the peak; the employees
have become more uneasy. Our brothers protesting the
situation have raised placards such as “Ahmadi-Nejad,
stop dealing with the outside, look at the inside”, it
has drawn attention that the security forces who had
difficulty of making a living themselves did not
interfere with the situation.
The discontentment
of the people for “not making investments” and the falls
in the production caused many medium and large scale
businesses to suffer losses. The unemployment rate
reaching 15 % is another signal for danger. For, this
situation causes our young people to lose their hope for
the future and a large scale brain drain to occur. The
uncertainty in the country affect the foreign
investments in the country and many agreements for the
investments at the Project stage are cancelled. In other
words, the investment plans that are expected to create
job opportunities for our young people have already been
put on the shelf.
Iran is a country
that has 10% of the crude oil reserves in the world and
has a production of four million barrel a day. Experts
state that this figure will reach six million barrel by
2010. However, despite the existence of huge sums of
money in the oil fund, the Administration does not take
any steps to turn the revenues to investment. In short,
as a result of uniting the failures in the domestic and
foreign policy with the inexperienced economics policies
that is based on the possibility of war only, the people
are drifted to a social explosion.
