Billions of losses to the Iranian economy due to the continuing protests

TEHRAN

The ongoing protests in Iran have entered their third week, and with it the losses incurred by the Iranian economy are increasing, whether due to internet cuts or damage to public and private property, in addition to the losses inflicted on cinemas and digital commerce.

Officially, the Iranian Minister of Economy and Finance, Ehsan Khandozi, acknowledged the damage to the national economy as a result of the recent protests in the country, stressing - in a press conference - the government's intention to compensate for the damage caused to the citizen's livelihood and livelihood, according to him.

Public property

The head of the communications center in the Tehran municipality, Abd al-Mutahhar Muhammad Khani, estimated the damage to the capital's municipality's property at about 200 billion riyals (dollar = 330 thousand riyals), stressing that 21 people from the municipality's cadres were injured as a result of what he called "riots."

Regarding the damage caused to the Tehran Fire Department, Mohammad Khani revealed the burning and destruction of 25 light and heavy vehicles and one Toyota car with all the equipment of the firefighting services, in recent days.

Not far from the municipality and the damage incurred during the past days, Jaafar Maaadfar, head of the Iranian Emergency Organization, announced the destruction of 85 ambulances and the injury of 10 medical personnel, explaining that the organization needs a trillion billion riyals to compensate for the destroyed vehicles and to continue its normal work throughout the country. .

The Iranian Minister of Economy and Financial Affairs acknowledged the damage to the national economy as a result of the protests that the country witnessed recently (French)

Internet disconnected

In light of the Iranian authorities’ decision to cut off the Internet and block social networking sites aimed at quelling the crisis, the statistics of the “Net Blacks” company for Internet services estimated that the country’s losses due to the policy of blocking the Internet amount to 450 billion riyals per hour (equivalent to 1.5 million dollars), stressing that The internet cut the country’s losses amounting to 110 thousand billion riyals within 11 days.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Syndicate of Professions active in the virtual space, Reza Olfat Nassab, revealed that the livelihood of 10 million Iranians is closely linked to the Internet and that blocking the Internet directly targets their livelihood and source of livelihood.

According to reports in the Persian-speaking Iranian press, about one million economic activists in Iran use social media platforms, especially Instagram, as a space for selling goods, advertisements and other commercial activities, and cutting off the Internet costs the national economy about 30 thousand billion riyals per day.

The losses resulting from cutting off the internet were not limited to social media platforms, as activists in the Tehran Stock Exchange and global financial markets suffer from a problem that has become old and new, and is repeated with the escalation of protests from time to time.

Cinemas

The protests, which culminate in darkness each evening, targeted cinemas in particular;

A report by the official IRNA agency revealed a decline in the number of moviegoers during the past few days, explaining that the number of movie theater attendees declined in the first week of the protests to a third and then to a fifth until it reached a sixth during the past three days.

The report indicated that ticket sales statistics in recent days show that people's demand for cinemas has reached its lowest level during the past year, and that the cinema sector's losses during the past two weeks amounted to 220 billion riyals.

According to the Iranian official media, the recent protests have inflicted great losses on various economic sectors - including aviation offices, money exchange, money transfers, digital trade and the health sector - in addition to the policy of cutting off the Internet from time to time will lose customers' trust in active stores on social networking sites.

The losses of the protests extended to the lives of Iranian patients, especially after the digitization of medical prescriptions in Iran months ago, where the policy of cutting off the Internet negatively affected the treatment of patients during the past days, in addition to cutting off roads in the face of ambulances during the peak hours of the protests, especially in the capital, Tehran. Which suffers daily traffic jams.

The cutting of the Internet caused the country to lose 110 thousand billion riyals (European)

other losses

Away from the language of numbers and figures that the official Iranian circles are dealing with these days, political economy researcher, Poria Astarki, believes that the losses exceed these numbers and numbers, especially after there were casualties as a result of the recent protests, adding that there are no accurate estimates regarding the losses witnessed by the protests in the regions. remote areas, including the events of Sistan and Baluchestan.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Astarki explained that some foreign parties have taken advantage of what is happening in Iran to tighten pressure and impose harsher sanctions on Iranians, stressing that the social losses may not be less than the international losses incurred in the country.

He added, however, that although the social rift between the protesters and the Iranian authorities has widened during the days of protests, it will decrease in the medium term, because Tehran has no way but to listen to the protesters' voices and work to achieve national reconciliation.

The Iranian researcher concluded that the losses will double if the protests continue, adding that the intensity of the demonstrations has decreased during the last two days.