Iran’s headline inflation rate increased to 49.1% in May
Iran’s annual consumer inflation rate in the month to May 21 climbed to 49.1% year-on-year, just shy of an all-time record.
The Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) said on Thursday that the annual inflation rate had increased by 1.5%, from the rate in April, Press TV reported.
The rate is the highest reported in Iran in 27 years, and the second highest since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, based on figures and tables provided by the SCI.
Like many countries in the West Asia region and around the world, Iran has been experiencing high but controlled levels of inflation in recent years.
The country has been hit by a double whammy of global inflation and continued U.S. sanctions targeting its oil exports.
Experts say measures adopted by the government to reduce Iran’s reliance on oil revenues have fueled inflation, although some believe that the measures will pay off in the long-run.
Those measures include a decision last summer to cut subsidies for imports of some basic goods.
However, SCI’s data showed that month-on-month, the inflation rate in Iran had slowed to 2.8% in May, from 3.75% in April.
The figures showed that the rate was 54.6% higher in May from the same month in April 2022.
The SCI announced earlier this year that it had changed in baseline year for calculation of inflation rate from 2016 to 2021.