Iran plans to lop three zeros off currency

Thu, 21 Jan 2010

Iran will remove three zeros from its national currency, the rial, so it can recover value lost in recent years, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said.

"We are supposed to remove zeros from the currency... as for some reasons the rial has depreciated during recent years," Ahmadinejad told reporters on Wednesday. "We have to restore its true real value to the one existing in law."

Ahmadinejad did not say when the changes would happen and gave no other details.

A 10,000 rial note is currently worth about one US dollar.

Iran's Central Bank chief Mahmoud Bahmani told reporters on Wednesday that he expected "one dollar to become even more expensive during the next year."

In September, Bahmani had announced plans to devaluate the currency by three decimal places but later said the idea had been shelved for further consideration.

The Iranian President directed the Central Bank of Iran in 2007 to mull over the concept of devaluating the national currency.

The decline in value of Iran's national currency over recent decades has caused numerous objective and subjective problems.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116696§ionid=351020102.