Enumerating the achievements of President Hassan Rouhani’s trip to Oman, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran announced that the country has no assets blocked in the Persian Gulf state.
“When we faced the problem of transferring the freed assets before the implementation of the nuclear accord, the Central Bank of Oman cooperated with us and we were able to resolve the issue through them,” Valiollah Seif was also quoted as saying by IBENA.
Government Spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht had announced last week that apart from a handful of countries with problems unrelated to previous nuclear sanctions, all of Iran’s frozen assets have been freed.
The Central Bank of Iran published a report in mid-January detailing the benefits of the country’s nuclear accord in the banking and monetary sectors, coinciding with the first anniversary of the accord’s implementation.
It said that after the deal was implemented, more than $9.9 billion of CBI’s frozen oil money were released and repatriated from the UAE, Britain, India, Greece, Italy and Norway.
The bank added that during the implementation of the nuclear deal, a further $1.4 billion and after its implementation, “at least $30 billion” were released.
Noting that a portion of Iranian assets is still at the Central Bank of Oman, the governor said Iran can use them at will.
A part of the assets have been gradually tapped so far, and “as to the rest of them, measures have been devised so that we can proceed to use them, if necessary, with greater ease”, he added.
Oman acted as a go-between during negotiations that led to the 2015 nuclear accord reached by Iran, the European Union, the US, Russia and China. The deal guaranteed the removal of sanctions against Iran in exchange for the country temporarily putting constraints on its nuclear program.
Seif had accompanied President Rouhani on Wednesday, who was invited by Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said, and met with his counterpart Hamood Sangour Al-Zadjali, who is also a member of the Board of Governors at the Central Bank of Oman.
Future Ties
On the results of negotiations with the Omani official, the CBI chief said considering the high capacity of economic and banking collaborations between the two countries, “the numerous ways of mutual work were discussed and laid out during the negotiations and it was agreed that a memorandum of understanding would be drawn up”.
The MoU, he added without specifying a date for it, is to be signed by the heads of both central banks in a meeting that will soon be held in Tehran.
Seif, who is also the head of Money and Credit Council, referred to other aspects of the talks, namely bilateral cooperation between the central banks of the two countries and development of ties between their commercial banks.
“In the next meeting, representatives of commercial banks of both countries will participate and see through the negotiations required to jumpstart and expand our ties,” he said.
Seif noted that both sides have also spoken of the possibility of conducting trade in national currencies and integrating their bank cards’ systems.
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