September 21, 2018
The Majlis Research Cen-ter says Iran is now in re-cession with the gross domestic product (GDP) expected to contract somewhere between 0.5 percent and 2.8 percent this Persian year.
It said the main problem was US sanctions reducing oil sales. It projected that the apart from the oil sector the economy would actually grow this year somewhere between 0.8 percent and 1.9 percent.
The Research Center projected the recession would continue for at least another two years if the regime cannot tackle sanctions. It projected a contraction of 3.8 percent in the next Persian year and 5.5 percent in the following year.
Last year, the World Bank predicted Iran’s economy would grow 4.1 percent in 2018 while the International Monetary Fund projected growth of 4.2 percent.
But the IMF also said that growth was dependent on Iran carrying through on economic reforms the IMF was told Iran would be introducing—but which Iran has not done yet. The IMF said Iran needed “urgent implementation” of all it has talked about. The IMF said its growth projections assumed, for example, that Iran would come into compliance by last January 31 with the banking standards set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Iran is still not in compliance.
So, in other words, the IMF growth projections were effectively nullified on January 31.
