AFP, Tehran :
Despite hopes of a new dawn for Iran’s economy after nuclear-related sanctions were lifted, major Western banks are reluctant to do business with the Islamic republic for fear of US retribution.
President Hassan Rouhani has said that to reach the target of eight-percent growth needed to modernise the industrial sector and relaunch the hobbled economy, Iran needs up to $50 billion in foreign investment every year.
But without the big foreign banks, that looks impossible.
“For the moment, the little European banks have agreed to work with us,” said Parviz Aghili, head of the private Middle East Bank in Tehran.
They include banks from Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium, he said without naming them.
“But not a single medium-sized or big bank has so far agreed to do it,” he added.
A major challenge is that while nuclear-related sanctions were rolled back in January under a landmark deal with major powers, the United States has maintained a raft of other penalties linked to ballistic missile testing and human rights violations.
Nearly 180 Iranian individuals and entities are still on the US sanctions list, notably the Revolutionary Guards, the ministries of defence, culture and intelligence, as well as defence companies, two airlines and several banks.
The Americans are “feeding a sort of Iranophobia so that in practice no one works with Iran,” Amir Hossein Zamaninia, deputy oil minister, recently told the Middle East Eye website.
The limited number of institutions that do deal with the Islamic republic include Raiffeisen Bank and Erste Bank from Austria, Mediobanca and Banco Popolare of Italy, Germany’s EIH, KfW and AKA banks, Belgium’s KBC, ING of the Netherlands and Turkey’s Halk, according to a banking expert in Tehran.
“These banks have established working relations with the Iranian banks to open letters of credit for fairly small sums of 10, 20 or 50 million dollars.”
But they lack the resources to finance big projects like the deal struck between Iran and European aircraft manufacturer Airbus for 118 airplanes, or oil and gas development projects, the expert said.
Despite hopes of a new dawn for Iran’s economy after nuclear-related sanctions were lifted, major Western banks are reluctant to do business with the Islamic republic for fear of US retribution.
President Hassan Rouhani has said that to reach the target of eight-percent growth needed to modernise the industrial sector and relaunch the hobbled economy, Iran needs up to $50 billion in foreign investment every year.
But without the big foreign banks, that looks impossible.
“For the moment, the little European banks have agreed to work with us,” said Parviz Aghili, head of the private Middle East Bank in Tehran.
They include banks from Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium, he said without naming them.
“But not a single medium-sized or big bank has so far agreed to do it,” he added.
A major challenge is that while nuclear-related sanctions were rolled back in January under a landmark deal with major powers, the United States has maintained a raft of other penalties linked to ballistic missile testing and human rights violations.
Nearly 180 Iranian individuals and entities are still on the US sanctions list, notably the Revolutionary Guards, the ministries of defence, culture and intelligence, as well as defence companies, two airlines and several banks.
The Americans are “feeding a sort of Iranophobia so that in practice no one works with Iran,” Amir Hossein Zamaninia, deputy oil minister, recently told the Middle East Eye website.
The limited number of institutions that do deal with the Islamic republic include Raiffeisen Bank and Erste Bank from Austria, Mediobanca and Banco Popolare of Italy, Germany’s EIH, KfW and AKA banks, Belgium’s KBC, ING of the Netherlands and Turkey’s Halk, according to a banking expert in Tehran.
“These banks have established working relations with the Iranian banks to open letters of credit for fairly small sums of 10, 20 or 50 million dollars.”
But they lack the resources to finance big projects like the deal struck between Iran and European aircraft manufacturer Airbus for 118 airplanes, or oil and gas development projects, the expert said.
