i The Effects of Coronavirus pandemic on Iran's Economy The Effects of Coronavirus pandemic on Iran's Economy Insurance Research Center of Iran (IRC) Spring-2020 The Effects of Coronavirus pandemic on Iran's Economy ii The intellectual property of this report belongs to the Insurance Research Center (affiliated to the Central Insurance of the Islamic Republic of Iran) and any withdrawal is unrestricted by mentioning the source. iii The Effects of Coronavirus pandemic on Iran's Economy Research ID Title The Effects of Coronavirus pandemic on Iran's Economy Employer Central Insurance of I.R.Iran Executor Insurance Reasearch Center of Iran Dr. Aziz Ahmadzadeh (Faculty Member and Consultant in IRC) Reports’ Associates Dr. Ali Souri (Faculty Member of Economics faculty, University of Tehran–Consultant in IRC) Scientific Supervisor Dr. Hamid Kordbacheh (Head of Insurance Research Center of Iran) Date April 2020 Impact of COVID-19 on the Global Economy 1 Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 1- Analysis of the effects of coronavirus pandemic on economy of Iran ........................... 2 1-1- The state of the economy before Corona .......................................................................... 2 1-2- The direct effects of Corona on the economy .................................................................. 3 2- Corona's effects on the country's insurance sector....................................................... 18 2-1- Insurance sector Value Added ........................................................................................ 18 2-2- Assessing the effect of corona outbreak on the insurance industry using input-output model . 19 3- Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 24 References .............................................................................................................................. 26 1 Impact of COVID-19 on the Global Economy Abstract Spreading Covid-19 around world has leaded to destructive impact on economy. These impacts are wary for various economic activities. The aim of this essay is to analysis the impact of Covid-19 on Iranian economy with focus on insurance industry. We analyzed macroeconomic measures in Iranian Economic context firstly. This laded to an approximation of infected sectors and activities of Iranian economy. Results show that Because of continuous sanctions has leaded low degree of openness, Iranian economy has less affected from international interactions with global economy in comparison with other economies. The main impact of covid-19 is through decrease of oil price (in result of economic global crisis) and direct impacts of Covid-19 (and preventive actions) on teamwork and labor-intensive activities. Accordingly, 60% of Iranian economy affected from covid-19. Then, we analyzed more accurately impacts on Iranian insurance industry using I-O approach. Results show that Covid-19 leads to approximately 15% decrease in issued insurance premium during a 3 month duration of spreading pandemic. Introduction The concurrent economy, which owes much of its head blowing progress to teamwork and division of labor based on professionalism at its highest level, is now producing many products under various forms of international division of labor. It is now facing with the constraint of social distancing. Which has brought many activities that were used to be dealt with in the form of staff gatherings at a physical center to a halt. This stoppage of the first layer of production has caused disruption in-group and international division of labor due to its vast backward and forward linkages with the economy. In other words, Corona has not only removed the infected people from the production cycle but has also made it impossible for the healthy ones to aid the infected group and even has made them unable to carry out their daily activities. Preliminary analysis of Corona's impact on the countries’ economies were largely based on a presumed China's economic recession and its rate and pace of transmission to other countries. But with the fact that the rate of virus transmission across the countries was more than the rate of transmission within China’s borders (or, as was later rumored, the risk and speed of transmission of the virus was more than what China had announced and claimed at first place), those economic analysis that based their study on the assumption that the Chinese economy is in crisis and that the crisis will transfer to global businesses linked to China quickly faded. So it became clear that the predictions and assumptions were not accurate. In contrast, it was the virus that took on the countries’ economy, through channels of human and social interaction and not by mere economic relations and commercial transportations. Two distinct features of this pandemic are the very high rate of transmission and its various complications among individuals, as it is fatal for some and mild for others or even completely subtle and asymptomatic for some other people. Its third most important feature is the lack of vaccines and effective treatment up to this moment. Together, these features have made physical and social distancing to be considered as the best way to prevent the spread of The Effects of Coronavirus pandemic on Iran's Economy 2 the disease. That said, although the death of human beings as one of the main factors of production (human capital) has a significant financial burden on the economy, but Corona's implications for the world economy mainly starts with the prescription of social distancing, which can be considered as a devastating disaster to all economic team works and activities that require close physical human interactions. Having said that, the dynamism and viability of society, and economy, all governments, individuals and businesses are reacting to the disease in different ways. These reactions create a fundamental evolution and revolution in economic activities, which in turn will reduce the severity of the disease's impact on the economy. 1- Analysis of the effects of coronavirus pandemic on economy of Iran 1-1- The state of the economy before Corona Iran's heavy reliance on oil revenues and its stark foreign policy of defending the deprived nations from the United States, has always been subject to sanctions and affected by oil price volatilities. In the last ten years of Mr. Ahmadinejad's presidency, the most prominent feature of the economy was the abundance of oil revenues due to rising oil prices leading to initiation of costly programs such as Mehr Housing plan followed by the tightening of sanctions and exchange rates hike in 1390. Then it was followed by a boom and bust. Later and with the beginning of Dr. Rouhani's presidency, the inaugurations resulting from the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” agreement and optimism about it, led to a period of prosperity in 1395 and 1396. However, this period did not last long, and with the beginning of Trump's presidency and overthrowing of “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”, Iran's sanctions resurfaced which along with money laundering disputes, Iran's economy weakened seriously plummeting to another recession. According to the Statistical Center of Iran, economic growth in 1397 was negative 4.9 percent (negative 2.4 percent without oil) and for the first nine months of 1398 was negative 7.6 percent (zero percent without oil). Naturally, the impact of intensification of sanctions on different sectors (and consequently the exchange rate shock) was not the same, where the industries and mining sector were hit the hardest with the negative growth of 16.6 percent in the first half of 1398, bearing the most damage from sanctions. On the other hand, the agricultural sector, with a positive growth of 3.2 percent, did not experience a tangible impact from sanctions. From monetary variables’ perspective, in the years 1397 and 1398, the replacement of oil revenues with borrowing from the central bank of Iran as a way to finance the government budget deficit, has increased the growth of liquidity and inflation. Liquidity rose 23.1 percent and 28.2 percent, respectively in these two years, translating itself into 26.9 percent and 34.8 percent in inflation, respectively.1 The country's efforts to strengthen the economy against sanctions through the law of maximum use of the country's production capacity, which prohibited the import of similar foreign goods, along with some policies applied to manufacturing sector and replacing imported goods with domestic products, (Domestically made movement) put a brake on the declining trend of the economy. Owing to these policies and initiations, in the third quarter of 1 The statistics of the year 1399 are for the first 9 months of the year. 3 Impact of COVID-19 on the Global Economy 1398 optimism was reshaping about returning to the positive growth for the year ahead. On the household side, the unemployment rate rose sharply due to the recession, and because of high inflation due to the exchange rate shock, the households’ purchasing power has plummeted. On this basis, it can be said that Corona attacked the Iranian economy at a worst time as the economy had been severely weakened by previous structural