{"id":39185,"date":"2019-04-30T03:24:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-30T03:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39185"},"modified":"2019-04-30T03:24:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-30T03:24:00","slug":"146-migrants-land-in-italy-in-un-organized-libya-evacuation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39185","title":{"rendered":"146 migrants land in Italy in UN-organized Libya evacuation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"88\">\n<p>\nDUBAI:\u00a0 Iran is facing a double financial meltdown, with soaring inflation and an economy expected to shrink by 6 percent in 2019, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>\nIn addition, the IMF\u2019s projection was calculated before US President Donald Trump this month told buyers of Iranian oil to halt purchases by May or face sanctions, ending six months of exemptions that allowed Iran\u2019s eight biggest customers to continue with imports.<\/p>\n<p>\nThat move followed the resumption of sanctions against Iran\u2019s oil exports last November.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cClearly the re-imposition of sanctions and the removal of the waivers will have additional negative impact on the Iranian economy both in terms of growth and in terms of inflation, and inflation could reach 40 percent or even more this year,\u201d said Jihad Azour, director of the IMF\u2019s Middle East and Central Asia department.<\/p>\n<p>\nUS sanctions against Iran have already cost the regime in Tehran more than $10 billion in lost oil revenue.<\/p>\n<p>\nMeanwhile the Iranian currency, the rial, lost more than 60 percent of its value last year, disrupting Iran\u2019s foreign trade and increasing annual inflation even further.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe official exchange rate is set at 42,000 Iranian rials to the US dollar, but the real market rate is currently about 144,000. Iran needs to work to eliminate the gap between the market exchange rate and the official exchange rate, said Azour.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe currency\u2019s slide, from about 43,000 at the end of last year, has eroded the value of ordinary Iranians\u2019 savings, triggering panic buying of dollars. In addition, Tehran\u2019s bazaar traders and businessmen, traditional supporters of the regime, have complained that they are unable to operate their businesses because of the fluctuating dollar exchange rate.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe weak currency and soaring inflation have led to outbreaks of sporadic street protests in Tehran and elsewhere since late 2017.<\/p>\n<p>\nDespite the negative economic outlook for Iran, Azour said there was little chance of \u201ccontagion\u201d spreading to the rest of the region as a result of Iranian problems because the country was relatively disconnected from trading patterns in the region.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DUBAI:\u00a0 Iran is facing a double financial meltdown, with soaring inflation and an economy expected to shrink by 6 percent in 2019, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday. In addition, the IMF\u2019s projection was calculated before US President Donald Trump this month told buyers of Iranian oil to halt purchases by May or face&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}