TEHRAN - Iran’s liquidity reached 39.214 quadrillion rials (about $933.6 billion) in the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-August 22), to register a 12.8-percent growth from the figure for the end of the past year.

According to the Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Akbar Komeijani, the country’s liquidity registered 39.1 percent growth in the 12-month period ended on August 22, IRNA reported.

“Banks need to take the liquidity management and growth control of their balance sheets seriously; since it affects macroeconomic variables such as liquidity and inflation in the long run,” Komeijani said in a meeting with the managing directors of the country’s banks.

He called for serious measures to be taken by the banking system to manage liquidity and control overdrafts, noting that if the banking system does not have the necessary control over its overdrafts, the CBI will have to take precautionary and regulatory measures.

Komijani stated that so far, the government has offered Islamic financial bonds in 17 stages, and specified: “during these offerings, a total of 322 trillion rials (about $3.14 billion) worth of such bonds have been sold by the Central Bank brokerage.”

In this regard, the necessary adjustments have been made regarding the bond yield rates, in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, he added.

Komeijani had previously said the CBI was going to take all the necessary measures for preventing liquidity growth which will consequently lead to inflation.

Speaking in a meeting with the managers of the country’s banking system in early August, the CBI governor had pointed to the sanctions and the budget deficit as the main reasons for the liquidity growth in the country, saying that liquidity growth would lead to inflation and the decline in the value of the national currency which will, in turn, affect major medium- and long-term economic decisions in the country.

The official had put the country’s liquidity growth in the 12-month period to June 21, at 39.4 percent, which shows an increase of 5.2 percent compared to the growth in the same period last year.

EF/MA