The Central Bank of Iran said Sunday foreign debt was near $6.40 billion by the end of the eleventh calendar month to February 22 -- $2.7 billion or 25% lower on fiscal March 2021-22.
Medium and long-term debt was $4.6 billion or 72% of the total and short-term commitment close to $1.8 billion. Short-term debt includes all debt with original maturity of one year or less plus the interest on long-term debt.
The country has been unable to attract foreign investment as expected because of the four-decade US economic blockade, cumbersome laws, steep forex rate fluctuations and economic instability, among others.
Tehran’s external debt averaged $15.54 billion from 1993 until 2020, reaching an all-time high of $28.6 billion in 2007 and a record low of $5.1 billion in 2014, according to Trading Economics, which sources financial and economic data from countries across the world.
The last International Debt Report by the World Bank Group showed Iran's foreign debt was $10.349 billion by the end of 2021. This was noticeably higher compared to the year before when it was $5.433 billion.
Iran’s long-term foreign debt reached $1.06 billion at the end of last year, down from $1.313 billion reported in 2020. The data showed short-term debt rose to $2.508 billion in 2021 from $2.067 billion in the year before.
The latest International Debt Report by the World Bank Group shows Iran's foreign debt was $10.349 billion by the end of 2021. This was noticeably higher compared to the $5.433 billion the year before.
Iran’s long-term foreign debt reached $1.06 billion at the end of last year, down from $1.313 billion reported in 2020. The data showed short-term debt rose to $2.508 billion in 2021 from $2.067 billion in the year before.
The IDR, formerly International Debt Statistics (IDS), is an annual publication of the World Bank featuring external debt statistics and analysis for the 121 low- and middle-income countries that report to the World Bank Debt Reporting System (DRS).
The report put Iran's use of International Monetary Fund credit at $6.781 billion by the end of 2021, whereas it was at $2.054 billion in 2020. Iran settled more than $254 million and paid $46 million in interest on its foreign debt in 2022, the group said.
As per the report, Iran's external debt stocks to export ratio stood at 13% in 2021, up by 3 percentage points on the year before. The short term to external debt ratio was 24% in 2021, considerably lower than 38% in 2020.
The report highlighted rising debt-related risks for all developing economies – low -- as well as middle-income economies. At the end of 2021, the external debt of these economies totaled $9 trillion, more than double a decade ago.
During the same period, the total external debt of IDA countries, meanwhile, nearly tripled to $1 trillion. Rising interest rates and slowing global growth risk tipped a large number of countries into a debt crises. About 60% of the poorest countries are already at high risk of debt distress or already in distress.
At the end of 2021, IDA-eligible countries’ debt-service payments on long-term public and publicly guaranteed external debt totaled $46.2 billion—equivalent to 10.3% of their exports of goods and services and 1.8% of their gross national income (GNI), according to the report.
Those percentages were up significantly from 2010, when they stood at 3.2% and 0.7% respectively. In 2022, IDA countries’ debt-service payments on their public and publicly guaranteed debt are projected to rise by 35% to more than $62 billion, one of the highest annual increases of the past two decades.
China is expected to account for 66% of the debt-service payments to be made by IDA countries on their official bilateral debt. Most of Iran’s foreign borrowing in the past three years was related to fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Tehran received $50 million from the World Bank to help the health sector cope with the fatal disease.
Iran solicited multilateral development banks for funds, in which it is a member, namely the Islamic Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank.
