Certificates of deposit for gold mined out of Zarshouran will soon be offered on the Iran Mercantile Exchange, according to its chief executive, Hamed Soltaninejad.
Zarshouran is Iran’s largest gold mine with 150 tons of proven gold reserves.
Commodity-linked CDs securitize a company’s product inventory and offer buyers easy ownership of goods without the usual hassles of storage and insurance. Commodities offered as CDs are stored in IME’s certified warehouses.
“The certificates could ramp up gold trading to a new record,” Soltaninejad claimed.
IME is expanding its markets fast. Other than gold futures and commodity trading, it will soon offer foreign exchange futures on the US dollar, with the planned addition of the euro.
Regulator Securities and Exchange Organization has already signed off on this, though the actual offering date, details of settlement dates and the size of the offered contracts remain to be hashed out.
Delays may come from the central bank of Iran, the final authority in regulating foreign exchange, which posits that the futures should be offered after the bank abandons its multiple exchange rate regime in favor of a crawling peg.
