Iran’s parl. committee approves new currency reform plan

Members of a committee of the Iranian parliament have voted in favor of a motion to reform the country’s national currency by removing four zeros from it and restoring an old currency subdivision named qiran.

News ID: 2001680

The head of the economic committee of the parliament said on Sunday that it had approved the outlines of a motion to remove four zeros from the rial.

Shamseddin Hosseini said the new motion aligns with a government bill that had been approved in 2016 but was dismantled in 2023 when the parliament passed a new law on how the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) should be governed, Press TV reported.

Hosseini said the new motion creates a new rial, which would be equal to 10,000 current rials and would be subdivided into 100 qirans.

Under the previous government bill, Iran was supposed to change the name and denomination of its currency, with the new currency toman becoming equal to 10 rials.

The bill was approved as part of government efforts to streamline the national currency and to simplify financial transactions and accounting.

To prepare for the bill, the CBI even issued banknotes with the last four digits in a much paler color to help the public gradually adapt to the planned changes.

Iran’s current administrative government announced earlier this year that it would revive the initiative as part of its economic reform plans.

However, Hosseini said the new parliament motion would keep the rial as the national currency and would introduce the qiran as its subdivision.

The lawmaker did not elaborate when the new motion would be put to the vote in the parliament’s main chamber./mehr