Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said the decline in oil price has impacted Iran, but there are some tools to minimize the damage, Trend reported.
Zanganeh said that a significant drop in global oil prices would impact Iran's economy and upstream projects, but the country "could pass through this stage by taking counterbalancing measures."
The minister who was in Baku Wednesday as part of a delegation headed by President Hassan Rouhani, said that Iran will compensate the effect of low oil revenues on upstream projects by issuing credits from the National Development Fund of Iran (NDFI) to contractors engaged in upstream projects.
NDFI is the country's sovereign wealth fund, founded in 2011. Based on Article 84 of the Fifth Five-Year Economic Development Plan (2011–2016), the NDFI was established to transform oil and gas revenues to productive investment for future generations.
According to the yearly budget, Iranian government should deliver 29 percent of oil revenues to the NDFI for private sector projects. According to estimates, Iran would face a $2 billion deficit in oil revenues to meet the considered figure in budget law.
The fund's assets were $64.4 billion until August, NDFI chairman of the board of directors Qasem Hosseini had stated.
Zanganeh said that Iran has plans to pursue a contractionary monetary policy next year and increase tax revenues to compensate for the impact of low oil prices.
OPEC Meeting
Iran will exchange information with OPEC members in the upcoming meeting on November 27 to find ways for stabilizing the oil prices, according to Zanganeh.
The government has yet to call for an emergency meeting at OPEC, and the November 27 meeting is a prescheduled event.
According to OPEC's latest monthly report, published Thursday, its members produced an average of 30,253 million barrels of oil per day in October, 226,400 barrels less than the previous month.
