Marriage loans at low interest rate (4%) are for young married couples as part of the government’s financial support. Based on the latest statistics released by the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), the number of marriage loans granted to applicants exceeded one million in the first ten months of the Iranian year (ends March 20).
Considering the present resource crunch, no decision has been made to increase the loan amount, the general manager of the bank’s credit section, Mir Mohammad Sadeghi stressed.
The government has directed the central bank to put marriage loans on priority to prevent obstacles in the way of granting loans to married couples, ISNA reported. It is six months since the banking network has resumed granting loans to eligible applicants who have passed the legal process determined by the bank.
But the processing speed of loans is not the same in all the 20 banks currently granting loans. This has led to a large number of applicants waiting in the queue to receive loans.
The amount of marriage loan is 30 million rials ($877) per person due to “limited resources.” Thus applicants seeking higher amounts of 50 million rials ($1460) are denied loans. Based on the current economic situation, the Central Bank has still no plan to raise the loan amount, but it has increased the number of banks granting loans from 12 to 22.
Applicants
The latest CBI statistics indicates that the number of applicants exceeded 943,000 over the last five years (from April 2009 - April 2014), with a growth spurted by an increase in the number of marriages in recent years.
In mid-summer of the current year, coordination of the ministry of economic affairs and the banking system made it possible for the latter to give priority to marriage loans. Therefore, up to January 21, about 1,091,387 loans were granted to applicants in the waiting list since April 2009, thus bringing down the number by 547,874.
More than 20 banks are responsible to provide marriage loans based on certain criteria in an agreement with the CBI. Banks Maskan, Saderat, Tejarat, Parsian, Sepah, and Melli have respectively granted more than 45,000, 231,000, 110,000, 8000, 22,000, and 260,000 loans.
