Baku, Azerbaijan, May 17
By Dalga Khatinoglu, Khalid Kazimov – Trend:
Although there are plenty of petrochemical projects in Iran, things are not going very well due to financial problems.
Shahriar Taghavi, an official with Germany’s Schmidtsche Schack, has told Tend that Iran’s banking issues have a negative impact on the country’s financial issues which eventually slow down the process of financing petrochemical projects.
Shahriar Taghavi added that European companies lag behind Asian competitors in Iran’s petrochemical market due to legal and financial issues.
Although nuclear sanctions on Tehran have been removed following the implementation of the JCPOA last January, most of leading European banks still appear reluctant to do business with Iran over concerns on running afoul of US regulations.
Non-nuclear sanctions on Iran include the US primary sanctions that were devised following the 1979 hostage crisis and now grapple the country’s banking ties with other countries.
Iran has drawn up plans for doubling its current nominal capacity for producing petrochemicals (63 million tons per year) through developing 64 petrochemical plants across the country by 2021 which in total require $40 billion investment.