The Central Bank of Iran will decide about using the payment channel devised by the Swiss government for sending humanitarian goods to Iran, head of the Iran-Switzerland Joint Chamber of Commerce said.
"Using the channel carries some costs for the central bank as it should allocate resources to the channel to the extent possible," Sharif Nezam-Mafi told ILNA on Monday.
The CBI can attract more companies to the scheme by allocating more funds to the channel, he said.
A humanitarian channel to import food and medicine to Iran, dubbed as the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Agreement (SHTA), formally started operation in late February allowing companies to trade food, medicine and other critical supplies with Iran without tripping over unilateral US penalties.
SHTA seeks to ensure that Swiss-based exporters and trading companies in the food, pharmaceutical and medical business have a secure payment channel with a Swiss bank, through which payments for their goods to Iran are guaranteed.
The channel started pilot operation last month after a shipment consisting of medicine worth €2.3 million was sent to Iran.
The government in Bern has introduced a list of 50 Swiss companies interested in using the payment channel. "The good point is that having an office is enough to make firms eligible to use the channel, even if they are not owned by Swiss entities," Nezam-Mafi said
He added that the 50 listed firms are active in food, medicine and medical equipment sectors and "Iranian companies can import goods from the listed companies."
"For the US government it is important that it verify the Iranian companies that apply for imports through the channel.”
Earlier this month, the CBI chief Abdolnasser Hemmati said the effectiveness of channel would be seen in practice, recalling the US administration’s hostile and illegal moves to block CBI financial resources overseas.
Food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are exempt from the sanctions that Washington imposed on Tehran after the US president, Donald Trump, walked away from a landmark 2015 international deal over Iran’s nuclear program.
The hostile US measures targeting everything from oil sales to shipping and financial activities have deterred several foreign banks from doing business with Iran - including humanitarian deals.
As Iran faces serious challenges in importing medicine and agricultural goods, it has strongly condemned the Trump government for making false claims about exempting humanitarian goods from the new restrictions,
In December, Iran's Health Minister Saeid Namaki in letters to the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the heads of two of its affiliated organizations (the World Health Organization and the UN Children's Fund) called on the international community to break its silence over the humanitarian crisis resulting from the illegal US penalties.
