Iran’s sovereign wealth fund, known as the National Development Fund of Iran (NDFI), is worth more than $147 billion, a deputy head of the fund said.
Since inception in 2011 the fund “$122 billion in loans/credit was to the private and public sectors,” Alireza Saleh was quoted by the Iranian Bank and Economy News Agency (IBENA) as saying on Thursday.
In 2022 the NDFI started investing in financial and monetary markets as it slowly shifted its focus away from lending to major development projects and businesses, Saleh said.
Alireza Mirmohammad Sadeqi, deputy for NDFI Banking and Credit Affairs, said the fund has given $31 billion in loans to 316 projects in the form of forex loans. Of the aforementioned loans around $9.8 billion have matured, he said.
“We have contracts to the tune of $4.5 billion with 11 banks for projects that do not require forex loans but have forex revenue. We have also given 700 trillion rials ($1.7 billion) in rials,” he said without elaboration.
The NDFI started providing forex-based loans to banks last October. Each bank can allocate up to 10% of the amount it receives from the fund to forex-based loans.
Applicants of forex-based loans are paid the rial equivalent of the currency loans and repay in installments based on the exchange rate on repayment day.
The first contract for a forex-based loan was signed between the Middle East Bank and a private company worth $7 million. The total credit to the bank is $300 million of which it can offer $30 million in forex-based loans to companies and projects it finds viable based on its own assessment.
NDFI is independent of the government and was founded to curb dependency on oil and save some of the earnings from oil and gas export for future generations.
The fund lends to nongovernment public sector, private firms and cooperatives in need when government revenues are low.
The main mission of the NDFI is to directly support the economic development agenda or contribute to development goals, say fund officials.
