Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23
By Elnur Baghishov - Trend:
One European bank has joined the financial mechanism between Iran and Europe (INSTEX) and another bank also intends to join, Ali Asghar Nouri, managing director of Iran’s Special Trade and Finance Instrument for Trade with Europe, said.
As a result of the US sanctions imposed on the sale of Iranian oil, it is almost impossible to provide INSTEX with the funds by selling oil, Nouri added, Trend reports referring to the Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture.
Nouri added that therefore, special attention is paid to other currency reserves, including income obtained from export of non-oil items.
'INSTEX may be provided with these funds. Both sides are exploring ways to do this," he said.
According to another solution, discussed with the European officials, INSTEX may be provided with the funds obtained as a result of the sale of Iranian oil to several Asian countries, he said.
Nouri said that seven Iranian banks that will work with INSTEX are currently shareholders of an Iranian company.
In January 2016, the JCPOA was implemented between Iran and the P5+1 group (US, Russia, China, UK, France and Germany) in connection with Iran's nuclear program. In May 2018, the US announced its withdrawal from the deal and imposed sanctions against Iran in November of the same year. In order to preserve the agreements reached as part of the JCPOA, the European signatories of the deal stated in January 2019 that a financial mechanism for maintaining trade with Iran called INSTEX was formed.