August 19, 2016
The Central Bank is quietly trying to prepare for unifying the foreign exchange market. As the chart above shows, it has been boosting the official price of the dollar almost every day by several rials since the summer began so that the official rate has now passed 31,000 rials to the dollar. But it remains about 4,500 rials below the free market rate. And the free market rate has been rising as much as the official rate this summer, so the two rates are not converging as the Central Bank would like. The Central Bank long ago said it would move to abolish the official rate and use the free market rate once the nuclear deal was implemented.
