The National Development Fund of Iran, the sovereign wealth fund, plans to give 150 trillion rials ($550 million) in loans to finance development projects, a member of NDFI executive board said.
Alireza Mirmohammad-Sadeqi said the money will go for projects in the agricultural, tourism, industry/mines and food processing sectors.
“The plan calls for investing 20 trillion rials [$74m] in knowledge-based projects,” he was quoted as saying by IRIB News.
The fund signed a MOU in February with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism to deposit 20 trillion rials with banks for loans to the tourism sector that has taken a big hit due to the coronavirus pandemic.
NDFI is independent of the government and was set up in 2011 to curb dependence on oil and save a percentage of the earnings from energy exports for the welfare of future generations.
As per law, 80% of NDFI resources should be used to fund private sector projects with non-government public entities getting the balance.
Earlier the NDFI said it has invested $27 billion in oil, gas and petrochemical sectors, $13 billion in water projects, $5 billion in developing and establishing power plants and $1.5 billion in sustainable rural employment since inception in 2011.
In the budget bill for the 2022-23 fiscal year, the government is obliged to pay 40% form energy export revenue to the fund.
