TEHRAN – Iran’s non-oil exporters injected $5 billion of their revenues into the Forex Management Integrated System, locally known as NIMA, since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21), IRNA reported, quoting an official with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI).

According to CBI Vice Governor for Foreign Currency Affairs, Gholamreza Panahi, one of the main policies of the CBI is facilitating exports so that the revenues could support the economy.

Iran provides foreign currency for the country’s exporters with significantly low exchange rates and the exporters are obliged to return the equivalent of the supplied fund in the form of foreign currency.

NIMA, which seeks to boost transparency, create competitiveness among exchange shops and a secure environment for traders, is a new chance for importers to supply their required foreign currency without specific problems and for exporters to re-inject their earned foreign currency to domestic forex market. It was inaugurated to allow exporters of non-oil commodities to sell their foreign currency earnings to importers of consumer products.

In mid-November last year, CBI issued the instructions on return details of the hard currency earned by exporters back to the domestic financial system.

The instructions, aimed to lead the export revenues from the non-oil exports back into the country’s economy through NIMA, mandate all the exporters of goods and services to guarantee bringing back to the country the foreign currency amount allocated to them by the government at lower prices than the free market.

In late May, CBI unveiled a new directive package to provide the country’s exporters with guidelines about how they should re-inject their foreign currency incomes into the country’s economy.

Based on the directive, for the petrochemical sector, the exporters should present at least 60 percent of their foreign currency incomes into the domestic Forex Management Integrated System (locally known as NIMA), and a maximum 10 percent could be injected into the financial system in the form of hard currency and the rest could be used for importing necessary goods.

As for other exporters, at least 50 percent of the total earnings should be presented at the NIMA system and a maximum 20 percent could be distributed in form of hard currency and the rest can be used for imports.

Earlier that month, the CBI Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati had said that “so far the country’s exporters have re-injected 60 percent of their total exports revenues in the form of foreign currency into the country’s financial system.”

According to CBI, last year some $18.7 billion of foreign currency was returned into the country’s financial system by the exporters.

EF/MA