IMF Retracts Iran Forex Reserve Estimate: CBI

The International Monetary Fund rectified its estimation of Iran's foreign currency reserves after it was questioned by the country's central bank. 
In an update the IMF said Iran’s "gross official reserves" were $115 billion in 2020, $111 billion higher from the previous forecast, the public relations department of the Central Bank of Iran reported Thursday.
The CBI said the IMF communicated the change in an email  "regretting the inaccuracy." The previous estimate was based on "presumption about accessible reserves,” the global lender said, according to the CBI.
In its latest World Economic Outlook report published earlier in April, the IMF said the central bank’s “gross official reserves” had declined sharply from $122.5 billion in 2018 to $12.4 billion in 2019. The reserve had further declined to $4 billion in 2020, it claimed. 
The CBI did not say whether the correction includes forecasts for 2021 and 2022.  The fund had forecast that the currency reserve would increase to $12.2 billion in 2021 and $21 billion in 2022.  
The projections were denied by the CBI Governor Abdolnasser Hemmati on Tuesday, which he said were “biased, false and drawn from incomplete data.”  
“This is an egregious mistake and a false report drawn from deficient data. Publishing incorrect estimations without CBI approval is not befitting of the IMF,” Hemmati wrote on his Instagram account.
Rejecting similar forecasts, the CBI has usually refused to announce its forex reserves “due to the sensitivity of the issue.” 
Iran’s "accessible reserves" apparently have declined in the past three years, especially under the tough economic sanctions unleashed by the United States that particularly targeted Iran’s oil export, the lifeblood of the economy. 
The US economic blockade has cut off Tehran’s financial ties to  global financial institutions and has made its access to forex revenue difficult, if not impossible. 
Friction between Tehran and Washington has heightened since 2018, when the former US president Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal Iran had signed with six world powers and imposed new sanctions to cripple Iran’s economy.
Hemmati earlier acknowledged that the total oil export revenue in fiscal 2019-20 and 2020-21 was less than $20 billion, which is locked up in foreign banks due to the sanctions. Iran’s oil revenue was around $40 billion a year prior to the new US restrictions. 
The CBI said it also takes issue with other IMF forecasts and is pursuing the issue.  It did not elaborate.
In his note, Hemmati rejected reports about the CBI’s forex assets in foreign banks, saying “such data and the status of assets is [the purview] of the CBI and statements in this regard by non-responsible sources is uncalled for.”