The Central Bank of Iran says the supply of currency for imports outpaced damned over the past three weeks.
“Forex resources are enough to fully cover imports as well as [needs of] the people,” the CBI said in a press release on its website.
It said $4.8 billion was offered by non-oil export firms on the secondary foreign exchange market, known locally as Nima, in one week but only $1.5 billion was bought by importers.
Nima is an online platform affiliated to the CBI through which exporters sell their overseas currency and companies buy for importing goods, machinery, equipment and raw materials. In this system, importers declare their currency needs, exporters register their currency proceeds and banks and authorized moneychangers are brokers.
With regard to cash currency, the CBI said $80 million or equivalent was offered by banks and authorized exchange shops in regulated forex market from April 27 to May 15. “Buyers took only $38.5 million of the amount offered.”
The regulated market is a CBI-affiliated spot market operated by a network of banks and certified moneychangers dealing in wholesale currency.
The CBI’s emphasis on availability of surplus currency is apparently to appease public concern about a further spike in forex rates.
In the past two weeks the currency market has seen a fair share of volatility spurred by expectations about higher rates that apparently gave rise to “precautionary demand”.
During a weeklong rally, the US dollar reached a multi-month high of 307,000 rials on Thursday before retreating to 300,000 rials at the beginning of the week on Saturday.
The American currency settled around 304,000 rials in the past two sessions. It gained more than 8% against the national currency during a wave of buying in the previous week.
The euro lost 0.1 % on Monday to close at 318,900 rials while the GBP was down 0.08% on the earlier session to buy 377,600 rials and the UAE dirham traded almost unchanged at 83,300 rials.
The greenback was tagged at 256,670 rials in the regulated forex market, up 0.1% from Sunday.
Rates in the exchange bureaus affiliated to the CBI were a bit higher. The Melli Exchange quoted the dollar at 255,540 rials, gaining 0.2% from the session before.
In the domestic bullion market, the Emami gold took a big drubbing and lost more than 1.3% or 1.9 million rials to close at 141 million rials on Monday.
But the Half Bahar Azadi coin was up 0.63% or 500,000 rials to reach 78.95 million rials and one gram of 18-karat gold was traded at 13.76 million rials – down 0.4% compared to Sunday.
