Resumption of overseas banking activities will help boost economic growth, a Tehran-based economist said at the weekend.
“Businesses and the public will welcome the reopening of Iranian banks overseas because it, among other things, helps reduce transaction costs and facilitates international trade,” Seyed Bahaedin Hosseni Hashemi told IRNA.
Regardless of improvements in import-export processes, the presence of Iran’s bank branches in foreign countries can facilitate access to the resources of ‘correspondent banks’ in the host countries and enable short and medium-term borrowing, he said.
“The commercial banks, however, need to improve their overseas structures and initiate negotiations with foreign banks.”
Following the nuclear agreement signed between Iran and the world powers in July, Valiollah Seif, governor of the Central Bank of Iran had said that the work of Iranian banks overseas “had been reactivated.”
He also outlined key banking services subject to the easing of sanctions as printing bonds, buying foreign bonds, borrowing from foreign banks, export guarantees, opening overseas branches and restoration of Iran’s link to SWIFT (Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications).
Tehran has been deprived of global banking facilities due to the international economic and banking sanctions imposed in Iran due to its nuclear energy program, which the West claims is geared to acquiring an atomic bomb.
Iran denies the charge and has announced at the highest echelons of political power that the program is totally peaceful and tied to producing energy, medicine and fuel for the nuclear power plant in Bushehr.
