Rial gets jumpy

January 22, 2021

In a near economic miracle, the regime has managed to restore value to the rial, bringing the price of the dollar in Iran down from 322,000 rials in mid-October to as low as 214,500 this month.

That restored 33.4 percent to the value of the rial over just three months.

It is assumed the Central Bank is pumping vast sums of dollars into the exchange market to manage this achievement.  But in the past, such Herculean efforts have always come to a crashing halt when the Central Bank eventually ran out of dollars.

The national currency began 2018 at about 50,000 rials to the dollar, which rose to 100,000 in July and a top of 190,000 in late September.  It dramatically recovered to 102,000 in mid-December and spent the next year, 2019, rising as high as 156,000 and falling.  It wasn’t until February 2020 that it began a death spiral, reaching 322,000 on October 15.  Since then, the rial has seen fairly steady improvement.

January has seen remarkable improvement.  The dollar sold for 256,500 rials on January 1.  Its strongest day of the month was January 18 when a dollar required only 214,500 rials.  On January 23, as the Iran Times went to press, the price was 236,000 rials.