Parliament members ratified an approval on Tuesday allowing the government to help raise capital for state owned banks by a maximum of five trillion rials ($180 million at official exchange rate). The capital can be raised from selling off government’s share of companies in the stock market or auctioning extra assets of banks and insurance companies, ISNA reported. Iranian lenders, especially state-owned ones, are in dire straits. The main state-owned banks are on technically insolvent, as they contend with over $58 billion in toxic debt and alarming capital adequacy ratios. The government is seeking to solve this by raising their capital and helping them repatriate their money from defaulting clients, among other things.
