TEHRAN - Central Bank of Iran (CBI) figures show Iran’s economy grew by 4.4% in the year to late March despite continued pressure on the country’s oil revenues because of American sanctions.
CBI figures published on Thursday showed that the Iran’s gross domestic product (GDP) without considering the share of oil exports had expanded by 3.9% over the Persian calendar year 1400.
Total GDP calculated on prices reported in 2016, when one U.S. dollar was equal to around 38,000 Iranian rials, reached over 65,263 trillion rials.
That comes as the current price of U.S. dollar is around 320,000 rials.
The CBI said economic growth rate in the quarter to late March was at 6.3%, up from 5% reported in the previous quarter.
The figures are consistent with the data published in June by the Statistical Center of Iran which put the country’s economic growth rate for the year to late March at around 4.3%. The SCI had estimated that economy without oil had expanded by 3.5% over the same period.
That comes as the SCI had used 2011, when one U.S. dollar was around 12,500 rials, as the baseline year for GDP growth calculations, saying that Iran’s GDP had increased to 7,569 trillion rials over the past calendar year.
The growth figures come despite the fact that Iran has been subject to a series of unprecedented sanctions by the United States since 2018.
Government figures and reports by international institutions show that it took almost two years for Iran to recover from the economic impacts of US sanctions on its oil exports as the country began to report positive economic growth rates in the second half of 2020.
Iran’s exports of crude oil have rebounded from historic lows reported in 2019 with figures suggesting that crude sales to China and other countries have exceeded 1 million barrels per day on average since October last year.