Maskan Restructures CBI Debt

Bank Maskan, specialized in lending to the housing sector, will start repayment of its debt s to the Central Bank of Iran worth 550 trillion rials ($17.4 billion) from 2023. The CBI had allocated the money in credit to the key lender. Maskan borrowed from the regulator to finance the controversial Mehr Housing Project from 2008 to 2015.  “Homebuyers had settled part of the money by 2015,” Ali Asghar Mir Mohammad Sadeqi, CBI’s head of Credit Department was quoted as saying by banker.ir on Saturday. However, the central bank allowed the bank to use the money for development of the massive project. Bank Maskan is set to repay the debt in ten years, according to the official. The Mehr project is a large-scale construction program initiated in 2007 by the previous administration to provide two million low-income people with housing through free land and cheap credits.