Tehran, Iran, Oct 18
Trend:
Oil and gas sector of Iran’s economy has high potential for corruption, head of Iran-India Joint Chamber of Commerce Ebrahim Jalili told Trend.
“But it is important that the authorities do not repeat the mistakes of Babak Zanjani,” Jalili said.
Iran plans to start offering oil for exports via its national energy exchange as early as next week. The arrangement will allow private traders to buy Iranian crude to resell into the international market, rather than NIOC selling directly to refiners.
On Oct. 28, NIOC will offer 1 million barrels for sale in 35,000 barrel batches at the base price of $79.15 per barrel, subject to modifications based on the fluctuations of the market.
"The government should be sure about the payments by the people who compete for oil at the energy market," Jalili said.
"But it should not be forgotten that the government is recalling the private sector whenever it needs. During the previous sanctions, the government had the same plan to sell oil to the private sector, but after the lifting of the sanctions, everything changed.”
Jalili criticized the opportunistic behavior of the government and said whenever the oil price is too high and the government can sell it, it does not care about non-oil exports, whenever the market fails, everybody starts caring about strengthening non-oil exports.
Referring to the new central bank`s regulations on returning the export foreign currencies to NIMA system he said, this process has already been experienced and showed that the export problems are increasing.
“Unfortunately we again make the same mistake,” he admitted.
Exporters — including petrochemical companies — of commodities categorized as “non-oil products” are supposed to offer foreign currency generated from exports in NIMA for importers to buy at mutually agreed rates. When NIMA officially came on stream Aug. 7, the US dollar was listed at 89,500 rials.
Although this was considerably higher than the official rate, the booming black market made arbitrage between the different rates highly profitable.
"Returning the export currency to the country is reasonable, but these methods are inefficient. If the current situation continues, we will have neither exports nor money back to the country," he said.