TEHRAN: Financial jobs in Iran are unlikely to be influenced much in a negative way by the change of currency unit, Zeynab Rezaee, an accountant told Trend December 15. Iran is expecting a to experience change of currency unit as the cabinet recently introduced a bill to do so. A Trend survey suggests not much trouble will surround the transition.
Iran’s currency the rial is officially rated at about 32,000 USD. The term rial, however, is used only in officials statements. People use toman, which is equal to 10 rials each. “One thing that everyone says is the change of currency will be officially announced after the current fiscal year is over, so preventing any major effort in the aftermath, Rezaee said. “We used to file our records in the rial, now after the unit is changed, we will only have to state the numbers in toman.” One of the reasons for changing the currency is to minimize the number of zeros that go onto money notes because of years of high inflation. In the past 20 years, the value of the rial has dropped five-fold. During the Khatami administration a US dollar would be exchanged for 8,000 rials. It is now exchanged for 39,000 rials.
The government has also cited concern to remove the difference between official and non-official denominations. Yet, some Iranians are worried that they make mistakes when typing prices. “I have been using rial when entering prices to POS machine so far. But now I would have to type one zero less I’m afraid I may forget to do that and transfer 10 times what I should,” Reza, a townsman said.
