The government’s spokesperson, Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, on Sunday noted that arriving at a final nuclear deal with the world powers would give Iran access to about $100 billion frozen in foreign banks due to the sanctions imposed on the country.
“Iran is selling about one million barrels of crude oil per day, but the money is blocked due to the sanctions imposed on the Central Bank of Iran,” said Nobakht.
He called on the Management and Planning Organization to come up with budgetary plans to properly utilize the government’s freed financial resources upon the removal of sanctions, IRNA reported.
Iran is currently under strict economic sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council and the European Union, as well as the United States over its nuclear energy program. In 2012, the EU agreed to an oil embargo on Iran and to freeze the assets of Iran’s central bank, as a result of which oil sales fell from an average of 2.5 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2011 to about 1 mbd.
On April 2, Iran reached a framework nuclear deal with the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, France and Germany in the Swiss city of Lausanne to resolve a 12-year-old dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program. A final nuclear agreement has to be worked out by the end of June this year.
Iran expects the sanctions on its economy to be fully and immediately removed once the final deal is reached.
