Iran Economic Monitor, Fall 2017 : Sustaining Growth - The Challenge of Job Creation

World Bank Group

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ECONOMIC GROWTH;    JOBS;    LABOR MARKET;    JOB CREATION;    PUBLIC FINANCE;   

RP-ID  :  124020

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The Iran Economic Monitor provides anupdate on key economic developments and policies over thepast six months. It examines these economic developments andpolicies in a longer-term and global context, and assessestheir implications for the outlook for the country. Itscoverage has ranged from the macro-economy to financialmarkets to indicators of human welfare and development. Thisedition covers the economic growth of Iran for the year2016. Growth performance in 2016 exceeded expectations basedon the bounce back in oil production and exports. Theeconomy registered a record growth rate of 13.4 percentaccording to the new GDP data published by the Central Bankof Iran.While Iran’s economy is relatively diversified fora resource-rich country, oil proceeds still play a crucialrole in public finances and external accounts. Iran’sability to increase production in 2016, despite the cutsagreed to by the rest of the OPEC members helped bringproduction near its pre-sanctions levels. The surge inexports led to an improvement in the current accountsurplus, to 3.9 percent of GDP in 2016, as growth in importsremained stagnant. Increased oil production and exportsbrought an increase in government revenues, however, theimprovement was not enough to offset the wideningexpenditures; the fiscal deficit grew from 1.7 percent in2015 to an estimated 2.2 percent in 2016. Creating fiscalspace for growth will be important especially in view of theexpected burden from securitization of government arrearsand growing pension system liabilities. Iran managed toachieve single digit inflation in 2016, but inflationarypressures resurfaced towards the end of the year and inearly 2017, as liquidity rose and the Iranian Rial continuedto depreciate. Job creation remained limited. In themedium-term, the growth rates are expected to revert to anaverage of 4 percent, reflecting modest reintegration withthe global economy in banking, trade and investment.Thereare significant downside risks, both domestic and external,to this moderate medium-term outlook.