BMI’s 100-Day Foreign Exchange Transactions Exceed $3 Billion

In light of Iranian banks’ expanded international role in the post-sanctions era, the volume of Bank Melli Iran’s forex transactions exceeded $3 billion during the first 100 days of the second term of President Hassan Rouhani which began in August, a report released by the bank announced.

During this period, the bank purchased more than $1.4 billion worth of foreign exchange from CBI’s Forex Clearing House and earned more than 2 trillion rials ($48.30 million) in net profit, the bank’s official website reported.

As BMI has been endeavoring to expand its correspondent relations with foreign banks, the bank has held more than 36 meetings during the period with many representatives of foreign banks and managed to establish correspondent relations with eight of them.

The report adds that BMI is the first Iranian bank to transfer money to South America through a bank in Brazil.

During the period, increasing revenues by issuing foreign exchange guarantees for Iranian traders topped BMI’s agenda and as the bank succeeded in issuing a notable amount of import and export guarantees for traders, the volume of incomes from issuing forex guarantees registered a significant jump.

In line with its other efforts, BMI has managed to connect its Paris branch to the Single Euro Payments Area—a payment-integration initiative of the European Union for simplification of bank transfers denominated in euro and Target 2, which is also an interbank payment system for the real-time processing of cross-border transfers throughout the European Union.

Since the new administration took office, BMI’s branch in the Iraqi city of Najaf opened on a trial basis while its Hong Kong branch (Melli Bank PLC) has been active since September 15, 2017.