June 17, 2025
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has drastically cut its forecast for Iran’s economic growth this year and now estimates it will barely grow at all, projecting a mere 0.3 percent increase in the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
removed the US flag it has long had painted at the entry to its building so that
all visitors must step on it before entering. As we reported earlier, President
Pezeshkian has removed the similar walk-on flag at the Office of the Presidency.
Such flags have been a regular feature at government buildings ever since the
1979 revolution to indicate opposition to US policies. However, many object
that they are unnecessarily insulting and provocative to the American people
and that Iranians are not given a choice when the flags fully cover an entryway.
The Iran Times has not seen the new forecast for Iran published in any of the Iranian news papers, websites and magazines it watches, which suggests the government censored the IMF report and did not allow it to be reported in Iran. Usually, many news outlets report the IMF’s quarterly forecasts.
This 0.3 percent growth forecast is a huge reduction from its last forecast in January that Iran would see a 3.1 percent increase in GDP in 2025.
It only forecasts a measly increase of 1.1 percent in 2026, down from 2.8 percent in its previous forecast, and a very impressive 2.0 percent growth rate as far out as 2030.
This is a big change from the impressive 5.0 hike in GDP that the IMF recorded in 2023, Iran’s best economic performance in many years. But even 5.0 percent was poor compared to Iran’s annual goal of 8.0 percent growth, which has been planned for every year for more than a decade.
The IMF’s latest edition of its World Economic Outlook periodical generally sees poor outcomes all around the world this year. Its forecast for global growth is just 2.8 percent, the lowest rate since Covid-19 undermined the world economy in 2020 and a reduction from the 3.3percent global growth it forecast in January. But while its global growth projection was cut by 0.5 percentage points, it cut Iran’s by 2.8 percentage points.
The IMF did not explain its new figure for Iran. It was just contained in a table in an appen dix to the report.
The IMF forecasts only 4.0 percent growth in China but 6.6 percent growth in India.
As for Iran’s struggle with inflation, the IMF predicts that Iran will return to inflation above 40 percent this year. After three years of 40+ percent inflation in 2021, 2022 and 2023, the inflation rate last year fell to 32.6 per cent. But the IMF projects inflation to rise to 42.3 percent this year.
The IMF figures on Iran’s GDP growth in recent years have been 2.8 percent in 2017, minus 1.8 percent in 2018, minus-3.1 percent in 2019, 3.3 percent in 2020, 4.7 percent in 2021, 3.8 percent in 2022, 5.0 percent in 2023 and 3.5 percent in 2024.
