Iran's Parliament approves to reform currency

Tehran, May 5 (IANS) The Iranian Parliament has approved to reform the country's currency rial by removing four zeros from the monetary unit. The measure approved on Monday, calls for fundamental changes to the national currency, including changing the name of the monetary unit from the official rial to the popularly used "toman", reports Xinhua news agency. Each toman will be equivalent to 10,000 rials. The goal is mainly to facilitate transactions, cut the cost of printing banknotes and coins, and enhance the efficiency of the monetary system. Inflation and rapidly declining purchasing power, ballooning volume of banknotes in circulation, fading facial value of the rial against other currencies, and hassles of using large digits in financial transactions are seen as other factors pushing for the reform. The idea to remove zeros from the rial has been considered over the past years, but it found traction after the national currency lost more of its value recently.
--IANS ksk/