The Economy Minister Ehsan Khandouzi said he has asked banks to publish the names of big loan defaulters on a regular basis.
In a note on his twitter account Sunday, Khandouzi said he has sent a letter to the Central Bank of Iran to that effect.
One of the aims of demanding transparency on the critical issue of big loans and reducing the debt pile “is to make available loans to a cross-section of manufacturers and the people, instead of a handful of [big] borrowers,” he wrote.
In the letter, Khandouzi asked CBI Governor Ali Salehabadi to oblige all banks to make public details about borrowers, the amounts involved, reimbursed and outstanding sums and the types of the collateral.
Published data must also include details about the banks’ reasons and justification for lending plus lending rates, according to letter seen by IBENA, the news agency of the Monetary and Bank Research Institute.
Lenders are also required to report on measures taken to recover bad loans and update their data on a quarterly basis.
The wanton inability or unwillingness to repay big money borrowed from banks have given rise to NPLs, hurt balance sheets of banks and increased credit risks.
Iran’s banking industry has often come under strong criticism by prominent economists, academia and the people for mismanagement and years of underperformance, not to mention the purported ruinous influence of vested interest in the lending practices of most banks.
In the absence of a strong oversight, lenders have refused to allocate loans/credit fairly across the country and to productive sectors.
Addressing the highly critical issue of big loan defaulters is one of the targets of a parliamentary probe launched by the Majlis last week.
“Lenders have paid no heed to our requests to clarify who are the big borrowers,” Mohsen Dehnavi, a lawmaker said.
Based on earlier CBI reports, at least 11 major debtors owe 900 trillion rials ($3.3 billion) to the dysfunctional banking industry.
Media and experts have often reflected on the omnipresent problem of the big defaulters as the biggest challenge of the ailing banking system.
NPLs reached 2,250 trillion rials ($8.3 billion) by the end of the first quarter of the current fiscal year (June 21), the CBI has said.
Compared to the period between January to March, NPLs shot up 20% and was 3.7% higher on an annualized basis. Data show NPLs have been of the ascending order for three years.
