Iran's sovereign wealth fund has close to $80 billion of assets, says the fund's alternate chairman and member of the fund's Managing Board.
The National Development Fund of Iran was created in 2011 to use part of surplus revenues from crude oil sales for investing in long-term projects.
"NDFI's mission and reason d'etre differ greatly from sovereign wealth funds of other countries," said Seyyed Mohammad-Qasem Hosseini in an interview with Mehr News Agency.
Unlike most peers, NDFI invests little of its money abroad. Instead it funds domestic projects with a focus on exports and plans that generate foreign receipts.
The fund can convert 10% of its assets into rials; the rest is used to lend in foreign currencies to applicants. However, due to economic turmoil in recent years, the fund has converted 20% of its annual oil revenues into rials to help economic recovery.
Turmoil has also led the government to refrain from increasing NDFI's share of oil revenues. Originally, the plan was to increase the fund's share of oil sales from 20% by three percentage points each year for five years. That has not happened.
Even this year, the parliament again ratified a budget proposal to forgo a two percentage point rise in NDFI's share of oil revenues.
