TEHRAN – Iran’s liquidity has grown by 28% in the first 10 months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2019-January 20, 2020), according to the Finance and Economic Affairs Minister Farhad Dejpasand.

As reported by ILNA, Dejpasand noted that the government hasn’t resorted to the banking system to meet its budgetary needs.

“Considering the current situation in which the country is under pressure from the unjust U.S. sanctions, the governmental assets should be used as leverage for growth,” he stressed.

He further mentioned a program for reforming the country’s banking system and said, so far 125 trillion rials (about $2.9 billion) worth of stocks and 65 trillion rials (about $1.54 billion) of excess assets have been sold by the country’s major banks.

Over 54 percent of the facilities which the country’s banking system has provided for the domestic economic sectors have been working capital loans.

In early January 2020, deputy economy minister for banking and insurance, Abbas Memarnejad announced that Iranian banks had managed to sell 150 trillion rials (about $3.57 billion) worth of their excess properties following the government plan for pruning the country’s banking system.

According to the official, based on the mentioned plan, banks are obliged to sell 400 trillion rials (about $9.5 billion) of their assets in order to reform the banking sector.
The mentioned assets are highly diverse and include a variety of items like lands, companies, firms, and shares, each group of which is being sold on its own terms and conditions, Memarnejad said.

EF/MA