NPL Penalty Waiver Enters 3rd Phase

The next phase of waiving late payment penalties for non-performing loans has begun at the Central Bank of Iran, prioritizing loans under 400 million rials ($10,600(.

The penalty waiver, the directive for which has been communicated to agent banks, "is strictly for debtors of Bank Melli Iran, Bank Sepah, Bank Keshavarzi, Tejarat Bank, Bank Saderat Iran, Bank Mellat and Bank Refah Kargaran," CBI announced on its official news website.

This is the third phase of a government scheme to waive NPL penalties for the banks to retrieve a portion of their resources, a significant part of which are currently locked as NPLs.

The original law, first approved by the Cabinet in February, approved a penalty waiver of loans worth up to 1 billion rials ($26,600) and while still in place, it has not been fully implemented because of a lack of resources. That is why CBI decided to execute it in four stages.

During the next phase, loans under 700 million rials ($18,600) will be prioritized and according to the deputy head of Majlis Planning and Budget Commission, the third and fourth phases require 25 trillion rials ($666 million) worth of resources from the government.

As Hadi Qavami had outlined last week, a total of 40 trillion rials ($1.06 billion) worth of credit has been approved for the execution of the initiative, 15 trillion rials ($400 million) of which had been allocated before Phase 3.

The scheme has so far revived just above $1 billion in NPLs, but the figure pales in comparison to the total of $64 billion of soured loans each worth under 1 billion rials.

According to the central bank, government resources allocated to this scheme have resolved a total of 380,000 loan default cases.

CBI has set August 22 as the deadline for the aforementioned lenders to start implementing the new phase of penalty waivers.

The second phase of the penalty waiver scheme, implemented two months ago, saw the foray of Bank Mellat, Bank Refah Kargaran and the Export Development Bank of Iran into the scheme.