Monday, December 17, 2007

Iran Disavows Command-and-Control Economy to Battle Inflation. AND: LPG prices go through the roof (Dubai)

The headline is a bit heavy-handed, I wanted to see how it looked.

Two from ArabianBusiness:

Iran plans to fight rising inflation by limiting the government's role in the economy and encouraging investments in the world's fourth-largest oil producer, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday.

"The government has extensive plans to tackle these problems," Ahmadinejad told state television in an interview, without giving concrete details on how it wanted to bring down double-digit price rises.

Ahmadinejad, who came to power in 2005 on a pledge to share out Iran's oil wealth more fairly, has come under criticism at home for failing to tackle inflation.
Consumer prices in the country rose 19.1% in the year to November 22, according to central bank figures published last week, but many ordinary Iranians complain official data does not correspond to price rises they see in shops....MORE

And:
The cost of gas in Dubai shot up by almost a quarter on Sunday, heaping more misery on consumers already struggling with the rising cost of basic goods due to rocketing inflation.

Both Emirates Gas and Emarat, two of Dubai's biggest gas suppliers, announced price hikes of 24% on Sunday, citing their inability to further absorb rising international prices as the reason for the adjustment.

“There has been a continuous increase in the price of LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) gas procured by us at international prices in the last few months and this has now reached unprecedented levels,” the two companies said in a joint statement....MORE