TEHRAN- Iranian parliament (Majlis) approved a government’s bill proposed by the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) for eliminating four zeros from the national currency, CBI governor wrote in an Instagram post on Monday.

Abdolnaser Hemmati also announced that during the open session of the Majlis on Monday morning, it was also approved that the national currency will be changed from ‘rial’ to ‘toman’ which equals 10,000 rials, IRNA reported.

The official further said that the monetary unit ‘qeran’, which equals 1/100 of toman, will be also used, adding that the old coins and bills will be gradually collected and new ones will replace them.

In Late July last year, Iranian cabinet approved a bill proposed by the CBI for eliminating four zeroes from the national currency, and changing the national currency from rial to toman.

The decision was made in order to maintain the efficiency of the national currency and facilitate and restore the role of cash in domestic monetary transactions.

Reducing the costs of issuing banknotes and coins, as well as tackling the problems which people are facing in simple daily transactions, like counting and carrying large volumes of banknotes and coins and finally eliminating coins from the country's economic exchange cycle, are some other goals mentioned for this decision.

The government first put forward the plan for shifting the national currency from rial to toman earlier in December 2016.

However, it decided to postpone the implementation of currency reconversion policy in 2016 due to some reasons including the expressed concerns about the time unfitting economic conditions which would ignite inflation and economic instability.

The policy basically seeks to facilitate monetary transactions among the Iranians and match the currency being transcribed in official documents and banking bills (rial) with the one utilized in real daily lives of Iranians (toman). 

Rial has practically been replaced by toman in daily transactions as the result of the cumulative inflation over the recent years.    

MA/MA