The chairman of the Iranian Home Appliances Trade Union, Akbar Pazouki, says that the decrease in Iranian citizens' purchasing power has caused a 50% drop in household device sales compared with last year.

Pazouki told Mehr News Agency on Sunday that home appliance sales have fallen, and the market is "almost stagnant" due to rampant rising prices and declining purchasing power.

Referring to home appliances' skyrocketing prices, Pazouki blamed "the rise in the price of raw materials" under the soaring costs of hard currencies.

The dollar value has more than doubled since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year starting March 20, 2020, reaching 323,000 rials on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Statistics Center of Iran (SCI) claims that the annual inflation rate is only 26 percent, though reports published by Iranian media indicate a stunning increase in prices for producers and consumers.

In an interview with the state-run news agency, ISNA, on October 13, the secretary of the Association of Industries of Household Appliances of Iran, Abbas Hashemi, announced a 130 percent increase in production of home devices' components compared with last year.

Ministry of Industries and Mines' Deputy for industry affairs, Mehdi Sadeqi Niaraki, also claimed last June that Iran succeeded in increasing home appliances production after international companies left the Iranian market.

South Korea's LG and Samsung, which previously held 80 percent of Iran's market, have ended their presence in the Iranian market beginning at the start of 2020, complying with the U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran.