TEHRAN, Iran, Jan.10
Trend:
Iran's banks have so far sold about $3.5 billion of their surplus assets, and they are expected to sell $9.5 billion of their surplus assets by the end of current Iranian year (March 21, 2020), said Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance.
"There have been plans to assign frozen banks assets and, thus, by the end of current year $9.5 billion surplus assets will be sold or assign," said Abbas Memarnejad, Trend reports citing ILNA.
"The assets are very diverse and include property, companies and shares that can be sold based on specific regulations," Memarnejad added.
"The Central Bank of Iran is supervising the process of assigning private banks' assets; according to the law, banks should sell their surplus assets," the deputy minister said. "The banks that refuse to sell their surplus assets will be fined by the Central Bank of Iran and by Securities and Exchange Organization according to article 17."
"In next three years, 10,000 bank branches will be closed. From the start of current Iranian year [began March 21, 2019] until now, about 500 branches were either closed or merged to other branches," he added referring to the policy to reduce the number of country's bank branches.
The official data show that Iran's banks have accumulated up to $23 billion surplus assets that should be placed for sale, and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance has recently launched a system to record banks' surplus assets to accelerate the process.