The manger director of the National Development Fund of Iran (NDFI), Mehdi Qazanfari, said the sovereign wealth fund may be forced to resort to “legal ways” to recover its unpaid debts.
“If loan defaulters fail to settle their debts, we will have no choice but to seize their property,” he was quoted as saying by ISNA.
Reimbursing forex loans taken years ago has become a hot button issue among private sector leaders and the NDFI.
The NDFI insists that borrowers repay the forex loans in foreign currency at today’s market rates. Debtors, however, want to repay the debts at (much lower) rates of the time of borrowing, referring to the steep the rise in currency rates and rising production costs that has harmed their business and ability to repay at high rates.
Most of the unpaid forex loans were taken out years back, when rates were much lower and the businesses climate much stable.
Earlier Alireza Kangarloo, head of the NDFI Public Relations Department, said the most NDFI loans were taken out by companies that are forex earners and have the ability to reimburse their debts.
“More than 73% of the unpaid loans are related to oil/gas, petrochemical and power companies. Oil, gas and petrochemical companies are major exporters and are obviously capable of the reimbursing the [forex] debts,” he said.
Based on inquiries by ISNA, NDFI’s outstanding loans are in the region of $10 billion, out of which the government owes $6 billion and private sector the balance.
Data released by the Central Bank of Iran show that non-performing forex loans far outweigh the rial arrears. Accordingly, the NPL ratio was 13.2% for forex loans as of Dec. 21.
NDFI is independent of the government and was set up in 2011 to curb dependency on oil and save a percentage of the earnings from oil and gas exports for future generations.
The fund lends to nongovernment public sector, private firms and cooperatives in need when government revenues are low.
