Tehran, Iran, Aug.24
Trend:
A credit in the amount of $1 million may be allocated to production, Chief Executive of Bank Saderat Iran (BSI) Hojjatollah Seydi announced.
"According to statistics from the automotive, steel, petrochemical and food industries, these industries are able to use the credits for production units,” said Seydi in a press conference on August 24, Trend reports citing IRNA.
“In addition, the supply chain of the drug has also benefit from the rial and currency credits,” he added.
“Taravat” is a special production credit plan, within which production units can sell their products to sellers and purchase the raw materials they need in the form of credit transaction and in exchange for long-term domestic currency issued by branches of the Bank Saderat .
"To improve the status of the Bank Saderat, we set out a three-step plan, which in the short term, in addition to curbing the bank's rising trend of losses, will increase profitability," noted Seydi.
He went on to say that the most important step in this regard was to reform the bank's financial structure. "Resources correction, optimization of spending and cost control led to halt the upward trend in losses,” he added.
Referring to the zero elimination from rial, he stated: “This issue has two subjective and operational aspects, both of which seem to require about six months to address, but we do not expect any reform in less than in six months”.
Having touched upon the issue of the sale of surplus bank assets and properties, the CEO of the bank said: “Since the beginning of last Iranian year [started on March 21, 2018], $209.5 million of the bank surplus assets of have been sold, and $476 million have remained.”
Seydi went on to say that BSI does not have any outstanding debt to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI).
He stressed that the country has no problems in foreign exchange earnings. "Iran has an issue in accessing currency and managing supply and demand for currency in the market, so setting up an Integrated Foreign Exchange Market can help," he said.
Establishment of this market has been approved by the Money and Credit Council, the highest banking policy-making body of CBI, on January 8, 2019, as the Central Bank aims to explore the real volume of demand and supply in the foreign currency market through a new mechanism.
According to CBI, the new mechanism aims to organize the transactions in the foreign currency exchange market between the exchange shops.