Tehran, Iran – Skyrocketing inflation is jeopardising food security among households in conflict-hit Iran, new figures show, as diplomatic efforts to end the war launched by the United States and Israel intensify.
“The people must realistically understand the conditions and restrictions of the country,” President Masoud Pezeshkian told a group of officials who gathered on Sunday to discuss rebuilding structures damaged or destroyed in US and Israeli attacks.
“It is natural that there are difficulties and problems in this path, but through people’s cooperation and reliance on national cohesion, problems can be solved,” he was quoted as saying by state media.
Pezeshkian’s comments came a day after the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) said Farvardin, the first month of the Persian calendar year that ended on April 20, had an inflation rate of 73.5 percent compared to the same month of the previous year. The SCI also noted that inflation was five percent higher in Farvardin compared to the previous month.
The Central Bank of Iran, which reports figures based on a different method and with different data sets, reported a slightly lower inflation rate of 67 percent for Farvardin compared to a year earlier, and a seven percent monthly increase.
Although not matched, both figures indicate a considerably accelerating pace for general inflation, which has been among the highest in the world over recent years, and is continuously making Iranians poorer.
A Tehran resident told Al Jazeera she could no longer afford some of the items she could just last month.
“And it’s not just me – I think most people in society right now can’t afford many of the things they want,” she said.
Figures from the institutions also showed that food inflation is much higher than headline inflation, meaning that people are increasingly forced to pay an expanding share of their shrinking salaries on basic items.
The SCI reported a staggering 115 percent food inflation rate for the first month of the year, compared to the same period the year before, with several staple items more than tripling in price.
Solid vegetable oil had the highest increase at 375 percent, followed by liquid cooking oil at 308 percent; imported rice at 209 percent; Iranian rice at 173 percent; and chicken at 191 percent. The lowest price hikes were for butter, at 48 percent, followed by infant formula at 71 percent and pasta at 75 percent.
Majid, a young man who works at a liver kebab shop in the capital, said the eatery has increased prices three times in recent months.
“The price of liver has doubled. When we ask suppliers why, they either say there’s a shortage or that sheep are being exported. Honestly, there’s no real oversight,” he said.
The state-run Consumers and Producers Protection Organization said in a directive sent to 31 governors across Iran on Sunday that new price hikes for cooking oil are “illegal” and “must be returned to previous levels”,