TEHRAN – The Central Bank of Iran (CBI)’s new foreign currency package, approved by the Cabinet on Sunday evening, would come into effect on Tuesday, CBI governor announced in a televised interview on Sunday night.

“The new package will expand domestic secondary market, where only 20 percent of non-oil exporters could offer their foreign currencies to, previously,” Abdolnaser Hemmati said.

Declaring that Iranian exporters including petrochemical and steel companies are allowed to offer their earned foreign currency to the secondary market in accordance with its supply and demand, the central bank governor added that “importers can receive the offered foreign currency by exporters after registering their orders at Ministry of Industry, which lets them import consumer goods, intermediate goods, and capital goods.”

In his remarks, Hemmati assured the Iranian nation that basic goods and medicine will be supplied from the foreign currency reserves of the CBI, earned from the country’s oil sales.

He also announced that the CBI plans to reaccept currency exchange shops as some role players of domestic foreign currency market. “Buying and selling foreign currency would be done by permitted foreign currency exchange shops merely for services and travel affairs and based on CBI regulations via submitting the requires documents.”
“From now on, applicants would be provided with foreign travel currency at free market rate,” Hemmati further announced.

The CBI governor admitted that, in the new CBI era, he intends to make a link among financial markets including the banks, insurance companies, and the capital market and to control foreign currency rates via the secondary market. “Policies to reach the target will be discussed and clarified with capital market officials next week,” he said.

HJ/MA