Government Plans to Remove Three Zeros From the Iranian Currency

 

January 21, 2010 (Hamsayeh.Net) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad along with his economic team plan to overhaul Iranian economy from the current stagnation into a more productive force within a five-year plan starting from the next Iranian calendar year, on March 21.

 

Iran’s government and the parliament are making final adjustments to a draft bill introduced earlier, envisioning elimination of massive government subsidies from oil revenues into every aspects of the economy. The government specialists also announced that three zeros will be dropped from the national currency, a step aimed at increasing the overall value of rial, the national currency. On this subject, Ahamdinejad told reporters, Wednesday, that we want to overhaul the currency and delete the zeros and bring the rial to its true value since it does not have value now.

 

The rial due to an ever-present high level of inflation and government’s quick solutions by over-printing, has lost much its values for the past 20 years or more. Officially, one rial divided into one 100 smaller denomination called dinars is the national currency. The current exchange rate stands at 10,005 rials to one US dollar.

 

Ahmadinejad said the economic overhaul should not be a cause of concern for ordinary people with limited means of subsistence. ‘We are trying to cover all people, of course. Maybe we cannot do it in one stage, and we may have to do it step by step,’ Ahmadinejad said in a report by MNA.