Azerbaijan, Baku, Jun.2 /Trend R.Zamanov/
The latest reports released by the Central Bank of Iran shows that 16,777 applications worth some 5.847 billion dollars have been registered at Iran's Foreign Exchange Center from the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21) until May 30, the IRNA News Agency reported.
Some 3,195 applications were submitted in the week to May 31. Some 1,552 applications were registered on May 30 which is considered a new record.
The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has paid over 603.7 million dollars to import medicines, raw materials, and medical equipments from the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year.
Based on the latest reports released by the CBI, medicine imports accounted for 310.7 million dollars of the mentioned amount, the ILNA News Agency reported.
Some 7.5 billion dollars worth of transactions had been recorded in the forex center in the previous year.
According to the center's spokesman Samad Karimi, Iran's forex center has the capacity to trade over 100 million dollars each working day.
The foreign exchange center was officially inaugurated on September 24, 2012. It aims at allowing importers of goods including truck tires, construction equipment and synthetic fibers to buy dollars at a rate 2 percent cheaper than the street rate at any given time.
The government maintains an official reference rate of 12,260 rials to the dollar, but only a limited amount of foreign exchange is available at this rate.
Iranian government plans to use revenues from petrochemical sales and 14.5 percent of its oil revenues to provide dollars for the center, central bank governor Mahmoud Bahmani said in September, 2012. He did not give an absolute figure for the amount of dollars to be supplied.
"With the distribution of currency in this center, the exchange rate in the market will go down, because some of the demand (for dollars) will be met in this center and the pressure of demand will be removed," Bahmani was quoted as saying.