TEHRAN - Iran’s non-oil exporters injected €35 billion of their revenues into the Forex Management Integrated System, locally known as NIMA, during the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20-August 21), the head of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) stated.

Releasing a report on the return of the non-oil exports revenue to the country's economic cycle since the year start, Hamid Zadboum said 68 percent of the income earned via non-oil exports has been returned, TPO published on its website on Wednesday.

NIMA, which seeks to boost transparency, creates competitiveness among exchange shops, and promotes 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 late May 2019, the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) unveiled a directive package that provided the country’s exporters with guidelines about how they should re-inject their foreign currency incomes into the country’s economy.

Based on the new directive, for the petrochemical sector, the exporters should present at least 60 percent of their foreign currency incomes into 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 of 20 percent could be distributed in form of hard currency and the rest can be used for imports.

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 to bring back to the country the foreign currency amount allocated to them by the government at lower prices than the free market.

MA/MA