SCI: Iran’s annual inflation up 1.4% to 38.9% in October

Figures released by the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) on Tuesday showed that the country’s consumer price index (CPI) had reached 403.8 in the year to October 22, an increase of 38.9% from the year before.

SCI figures showed Iran’s annual inflation had increased by 1.4% compared to the same rate reported in the month to late September.

The data showed that consumer prices in Iran had risen by 5% on a month-on-month basis in October as prices of food, beverages, and smoking products rose by 6.4% while prices of non-food products and services increased by 4.2% over the same period.

Iran’s CPI, measured on a point-to-point scale, which compares inflation in two same months in back-to-back years, was 48.6% in October, up 3.3% from the same rate in September, SCI figures showed.

Iran has been grappling with high but controlled levels of inflation since 2020, when the country began to feel the impacts of US sanctions and the global spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the country has been reporting annual inflation rates of below 40% in the past months, meaning it has weathered the severe economic woes experienced in 2023 and early 2024.

Iran’s inflation rate peaked at 49.1% in May 2023, just shy of an all-time record reported some three decades ago.

The major rise in Iran’s monthly inflation rate in October came a month after the United Nations re-imposed a series of sanctions on the country that had been lifted as part of a 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers.

Prices in Iran were further destabilized in June during a brief war of aggression fought between the country and the Israeli regime./isna