Iran under sanctions: no money for medicine but luxury cars aplenty - The Guardian (blog)
In 2012, the United States and European Union introduced new financial and energy sanctions designed in part to curb Iran’s oil exports. The US threatened foreign financial institutions dealing with Iran’s Central Bank, making it hard for Iranian companies to acquire the dollars needed to buy imports. In any case foreign currency dried up, because the sanctions halved Iran’s oil exports – its main source of foreign exchange – and cut oil revenue from $95bn in 2011 to $69bn in 2012. Even when dollars were available, the cost of imports became... Shabnam Safamanesh, a businesswoman involved in importing pharmaceuticals, told Tehran Bureau that western banks soon refused letters of credit issued by Iranian financial institutions. From March 2012 to July 2013, Iran’s Central Bank made available an undisclosed amount of US dollars at a highly subsidised rate of 12,260 rials to pay for the imports of vital goods, especially food and medicine. This rate would last to July 2013, when the bank doubled the exchange rate to 24,777 rials, still better than the market rate but far less so. When the subsidised rate was introduced in 2012, Reza Fatemi Amin, a deputy planning minister, made... Source: www.theguardian.com
