Vice President of Iran Chamber: 8% Economic Growth Requires 5 Quadrillion Tomans

The Vice President of the Iran Chamber of Commerce states that achieving an 8% economic growth as outlined in the seventh development plan is not feasible, as it requires an investment equivalent to "5 quadrillion tomans." Mehdi Sadeghi Niarki said on Tuesday, August 23, during a meeting of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce representatives: "To achieve 8% economic growth in the seventh development plan, we need 100 billion dollars in annual investment. This amount equals 5 quadrillion tomans, while the total lending capacity of banks and financial institutions in the country in 2023 was only 5.5 trillion tomans." He also reminded that according to the Central Bank's announcement, the country's net foreign account balance was about 15 billion dollars negative in the first nine months of 2022, adding: "In contrast, the amount of foreign investment attracted from 2011 to 2022 has gradually reached 1.5 billion dollars per year." The prospect of 8% economic growth has been repeatedly mentioned in debates and campaigns of candidates for the 14th presidential election. In these debates, Masoud Pezeshkian, who later became president, stated that this level of economic growth is "not achievable," while Saeed Jalili, the candidate supported by conservatives, responded that "anyone who says 8% growth is impossible does not want to solve problems." Ultimately, the challenge between the two candidates escalated to the point where Pezeshkian emphasized that if Jalili could achieve this level of growth, he would withdraw from the election, "provided that if he fails to deliver growth, he should be executed." Statistics from the Central Bank of Iran and the UN Conference on Trade and Development indicate that from the beginning of 2021 to the first nine months of last year, over 44 billion dollars in capital flight occurred from the country. This figure is ten times the total foreign direct investment attracted in the country over the past three years. According to data from the Statistical Center, the average annual growth rate of real GDP in Iran in the years following the revolution has been around 1.8 percent. Data from the International Monetary Fund also shows that Iran's highest economic growth was recorded in 2016, following the JCPOA agreement, with an economic growth rate of 12.5 percent and an inflation rate of 9.03 percent.