“Only a few people who have come here from Iran are buying gifts from Karbala shops these days,” lamented al-Bazzaz, who is left with his unsold fabrics. “Before, people were buying everything here in this holy city but the depreciation of Iran's rial has seen many visitors stop spending.”
The exchange shops in Karbala have also suffered due to the changes in the currency. The Iranian currency was a bigger part of their business than the US dollar and the owner of one exchange shop, Abdul-Amir al-Rakabi, told NIQASH that a lot of the stores have lost some of their liquidity as a result of the drop in the value of the Iranian rial.
Another exchange shop owner, Adel Ubaid, reported that some Iranian merchants were actually more interested in buying up the Iranian rials because it was cheaper for them to do so in Iraq, rather than on the international markets. “Here, the Iranian currency has dropped significantly in value,” he explained. “But this doesn’t reflect the price in Iran, or on international money markets.”
Karbala's governor, Amal al-Din al-Hir, has warned about the impact of the decrease in Iranian visitors. However he has also noted that other trends in tourism in Karbala – most significantly, the fact that visitors were also flooding into Karbala from elsewhere.
“Karbala is now receiving tourists from around the Arab, and the Islamic, world as well as from the west. The number of non-Iranian visitors has started to rise. It’s now in the thousands, whereas it used to just be hundreds,” al-Hir said.
Comments are closed.