Under an approval by the Money and Credit Council (MCC), the customers of banks who manage to pay their foreign currency debts in six months time will be offered a 30% discount, an MCC member announced Tuesday.
The price projected for the dollar in the budget of the current fiscal year was 26,500 rials. Given the discount offered by the council, debtors can now pay their loans in the dollar which is 30% cheaper if the debts are made before the set deadline.
The MCC is now in charge of helping set interest rates on loans offered in foreign currency by the Oil Stabilization Fund (OSF), said Hadi Ghavami on Wednesday in an interview with IRNA.
The customers who are unable to meet the deadline but instead manage to settle their debts in less than a year “will also be offered a 25% discount,” the official said. “Those who fail to clear their debts in either deadline will be liable to no exemptions whatsoever.”
The aggregate amount of foreign currency debts to the OSF is roughly $24 million, and the private sector owes nearly 60% of the amount, Ghavami noted.
The official further explained that the clients’ failure in paying debts was caused in part by the sharp depreciation of the rial against foreign currencies in 2012, which left many manufacturing units in trouble, as they needed to change their profits, made in rial, to the dollar at higher prices. At the same time, they needed to pay an additional 12% penalty on the original 6% interest rate for the loans they received .
Strict Measures
According to, Kamal Seyedali, a former central bank deputy governor, debtors generally comprise of three groups: the government, the private sector, and the individuals who have received loans in rial.
“Four or five approvals by the MCC have so far discussed how to settle foreign currency debts to the OSF if clients fail to clear their debts by the set deadlines. The central bank, every time, has been urged to sternly pursue the issue through strict measures,” the former foreign currency deputy said Wednesday, in an interview with FNA. The general agreement at the MCC was on the debts to be paid in foreign currencies, the official clarified. “However, financial resources available in foreign currencies are limited. So, the central bank allowed for the debts to be settled in rial.”
He added that over the past two years, three banks including Bank Saderat Iran, Mellat Bank, and Tejarat Bank have managed to settle their debts to the OSF.
