Banks will start issuing credit cards to owners of the so-called Justice Shares in the coming week, head of the Central Security Depository of Iran (CDSI) said.
The shares are to be used as collateral and the amount of credit will be 60% of the share portfolio, Hussein Fahimi said, IBENA reported.
Justice Shares are shares of government-owned companies that were given free to the six lowest income deciles almost a decade ago. Shareholders were not allowed to sell the shares until last May.
"Coordination has been done with five banks," Fahimi said. "Bank Melli Iran [the largest state-owned lender] is the leading bank in the plan".
Trade in Justice Shares started officially on May 26, with shareholders allowed to place sale orders for 30% of the value in their portfolio in the initial stage.
Later the stock market regulator allowed shareholders to sell 60%. The decision reportedly led to oversupply in the share market and added to the slump in share prices.
More than 49 million Iranians own the shares comprising largely of blue chips and large caps with high impact on the main index of Tehran Stock Exchange, TEDPIX. The portfolio includes 49 state-owned companies in the auto, metal, mining, and agriculture, petrochemical and banking sectors.
The plan comes on the heels of a steep downturn in the saturated share market. On the back of fresh liquidity from neophyte investors, TEDPIX crossed an all-time high of 2.1 million points on August 9 – an unprecedented 300% growth since the beginning of the fiscal year last March when the benchmark was near 500,000 points. The TSE main index crashed to reach 1.2 million points, down 43% from the historic levels.
