North Khorasan province has assigned 419 million euro (approximately $510 million) worth of development plans to National Development Fund of Iran (NDFI), Mohammadreza Movaffaq, director of economic and international affairs of North Khorasan said on Tuesday.
The province is expecting to raise an additional fund of over 10 trillion rials in production and economic plans. There are 50 major projects in North Khorasan that are expecting the NDFI’s funds for completion, he said adding that it is unprecedented in North Khorasan to assign so many development projects to NDFI.
Movaffaq also emphasized that all project documents have been sent to both provincial and national banks in order to raise those projects’ chance of receiving the funds. “Based on NDFI’s regulations for economic and production plans, investors and the banks are responsible to follow up the procedures but province officials are able to ease the fundraising process.”
NDFI to Fund 250 bn rials for 15 Projects
So far, about 250 billion in rial has been loans received from National Development Fund of Iran for completion of 15 economic plans in North Khorasan. Movaffaq also added “the White Gold Project is one of the most significant economic and tourism sites that have been assigned to tourism bank for receiving low interest rate loan.”
According to him, the tourism bank has agreed to fund the project by charging 14 percent interest rate. “Fortunately, the cultural heritage organization of North Khorasan, agreed to subsidize 8 percent of the total interest rate.”
Strict Regulations
Some strict regulations in the banking system are the reason why most investors are not able to receive loans from National Development Fund of Iran, Movaffaq said. He outlined “not having an outstanding amount in their loan balance” as one of the strict regulations and explained that because of financial difficulties over the past years, many of the companies are not able to meet this prerequisite.
For less developed provinces such as North Khorasan, the central bank should suspend some of these strict regulations so that investors can continue to improve their businesses, Movaffaq said.
