Azerbaijan, Baku, July.21/ Trend R.Zamanov/
The World Bank's statement is unprofessional, not technical, and wrong, Behrouz Alishiri said on Sunday.
World Bank announced earlier this week that Iran has not paid back any of its loans for more than six months. The World Bank said it was placing Iran's loans in non-performing status, as it must do when a country has not made any payments for more than half a year. Iran owed the bank $697 million on June 30, of which $79 million was overdue.
Alishiri blamed the western sanctions and bank-transfer problems for the delay, the Mehr News Agency reported.
"Iran was due to pay 29 million dollars to the World Bank on January 15. Iran paid the mentioned amount to a third party bank on January 7 and January 15 but the third party failed to transfer the money to the World Bank,' he explained.
"Iranian finance minister held a meeting with the deputy head of the World Bank on April 21. During the meeting Iran asked the World Bank to negotiate with the US and other parties that have put the sanctions on Iran's banking system in order to facilitate the money transfer," Alishiri said.
"The World Bank's finance director announced on June 4 that Washington has agreed to the transfer. After that, Tehran has paid off some 10 million dollars of its debts to the World Bank," he added.
"So as I explained we were not able to transfer money for 5 months which should not be counted as the given six-month period," Alishiri said.
He further said that Iran is ready to pay all its debts to the World Bank.