Week in Brief 27.04.2018

In a ceremony introducing the NIMA currency system, Vice President, Eshaq Jahangiri emphasized the Government’s decision to control the currency market even if some people may be planning to disrupt financial stability. He mentioned the pre-sale of gold coins as a solution to protect people’s capital and said: “Do you think people lined up to buy coins? [No] Only 65 thousand people pre-bought a few million coins. Some purchased 25 thousand coins in one go.”

The pre-sale of coins at the announced price was pure profit to the point that some financial analyst saw it as plundering of the Central Banks resources. In spite of this, it is unlikely that real investors would spend 370 billion IRRs  ($8.8m) of their money only on coins. The vice president claimed that some people seek to manipulate the market and stated that that managing these situations is the government’s main task.

The main question however, is: these people who were able to purchase millions of coins, in the future could they attempt to cause instability in the coin market as well?