Iran should pay 200 million euros as bond interest

Iran should pay 200 million euros as bond interest
Payvand's Iran News ...
7/21/02

Tehran, July 21, IRNA -- According to a banking expert, Mohammad Hassan Ghadiri Abyaneh, Central Bank of Iran (CBI), which has sold bonds worth 500 million euros at the European financial market, should pay around 200 million euros in interest to the suppliers of loans.

Abyaneh informed IRNA on Sunday that Iran should actually reimburse 700 million euros, while euro's exchange rate against dollar has recently been raised.

A while ago, some bonds in hard currency worth 500 million euros were presented to the world financial markets by CBI, which were procured by 80 European, Asian and Middle Eastern monetary, banking and insurance institutes.

The bonds rate of interest, with a five-year validity, is 8.75 percent.

He referred to the sale of Iran's bonds as a catastrophic success.

He compared the measure to that of a medical group aimed at saving the wounded in a car accident, which despite being considered as an achievement, there is still the need for a surgical operation.

He added, "CBI' sale of hard currency bonds is a successful and necessary step, but the Islamic Republic's need to sale the bonds originated from its ailing economic structure and a catastrophic performance."

He said that while over 2,000 national projects and 45,000 provincial ones are still semi-finished and that around rls 210,000 billion, equivalent to dlrs 26 billion, is still required for their completion and that further delay will annul the previous investments. The annual hidden subsidies paid on energy vectors amounts to dlrs 13 billion, which is 26 times the value of the sold hard currency bonds.

He concluded that the value of the sold bonds is equivalent to the subsidies paid on the fuel consumed in Iran in two weeks.

Dr. Ghadiri Abyaneh
http://www.ghadiri.org/archives/000377.html