TEHRAN (Iran News) – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has corrected its wrong estimate about the amount of Iran’s foreign exchange reserves in an official note sent to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), says a CBI statement.
The statement released on Thursday by CBI’s public relations office said that the IMF had sent an official email to the bank announcing that Iran’s gross international reserves had amounted to $115 billion in 2020, thereby correcting a previous estimate of only $4 billion.
The statement said that the IMF had admitted in the email that it had misjudged the situation around Iran’s foreign currency reserves by calculating the sheer amount of resources that are accessible to the country.
It said the email had come after the CBI launched an official protest to the IMF about the estimate.
CBI governor Abdolnasser Hemmati said earlier this week that the IMF had used flawed data and incorrect methodology to calculate the amount of Iran’s foreign reserves.
Hemmati had even suggested that the calculation could represent IMF’s biased approach toward Iran as the organization has refused to grant the country a loan it needs to tackle the coronavirus pandemic under alleged pressure from the US.
The IMF had explained in the footnotes of its recent Regional Economic Outlook report that the data about the amount of Iran’s gross international reserves had been amended so that they could represent the assets that are readily available to the country following the imposition of US sanctions in 2018.
Iran holds tens of billions worth of blocked reserves in banks in other countries where financial authorities say they are unable to process the funds within the US dollar system over fears they might face penalties by Washington.
CBI’s Thursday announcement said the bank would continue to press the IMF to fix other issues it has raised about the Regional Economic Outlook and its data on Iran.
