Azerbaijan, Baku, Jul.16/ Trend F.Karimov/
Iran has gained billions of dollars in recent years through changing its foreign currency basket and changing different foreign currencies into each other, the Mehr News Agency quoted Iran's Central Bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani as saying.
He added that the country's foreign debt decreased by $27.7 billion despite all the external pressures and the economic sanctions, reaching from $41.8 billion to $14.1 billion.
He also said that the central bank's capital increased by 176 percent, reaching from 11,200 billion rials in 2007 to 31,000 billion rials in 2012. He predicted that that the figure would hit 40,000 billion rials in the current year.
This is while, first vice president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said on Monday that the government is not indebted to the central bank, even a single rial, the Fars News Agency reported.
In January, Bahmani said that unpaid debts to banks have been decreased to 644 trillion rials (52.5 billion dollars based on the official USD rate) from the previous figure of 700 trillion rials (70 billion dollars, the ISNA News Agency reported.
Abbas Kamarei, a member of the board of directors of the Melli Bank of Iran, said on January 14 that the bank's debt to the Central Bank has sharply reduced.
The bank's outstanding claims have also been reduced within the past month, he stated. Meanwhile, the bank is continuing to fund semi-finished projects, he noted.
In December 2012, the Fars News Agency quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying Iran's main financial problem is the banking system's outstanding bad loans.
"Some 300 individuals hold 60 per cent of the nation's total money," he said, but added that "there is no financial shortage in the country."
Ahmadinejad has said that Iran has over $100 billion in foreign currency reserves.
"Our (foreign currency) reserves are over $100 billion, of course if we include gold reserves," he said.
"This is a gift from the current administration to the next administrations," added Ahmadinejad, who will hand over the presidency to Hassan Rohani in August.