TEHRAN (Iran News) – A board member of Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce says Iraq will join the SWIFT and it will cause Iran to lose some of its tools for skirting the U.S. sanctions.
Speaking to ILNA, Ali Shariati touched upon the U.S. decisions for creating some restriction for arrival of dollar in Iraq and said that one should consider this point that Iran is under unfair and cruel U.S. sanctions and all in Iran try to increase oil sales and return its money back to the country to reinforce some part of the forex resources. He further said Iraq as the second trade partner of Iran that has traditional banking system has always helped Iran to round the sanctions and this decision of the U.S. will make the condition difficult.
He added that however this decision is part of the reality of the forex market of the country and we should not forget this point that Iraq will soon join the SWIFT and this will make Iran lose some of its tools for rounding the sanctions and therefore officials do their best to bring into the country all of its forex to stabilize and cause peace in the market.
Shariati stated that all efforts of the statesmen are to ease exit and arrival of the forex and efforts for unfreezing the funds or connection of Iranian and banks are in this line.
He reiterated that the officials should calculate all of their actions because Russia with increasing sales of oil and gas will definitely not understand Iran’s problems but if Iran can ease trade with China and Iraq it will benefit but so far no detail of agreements with China has been revealed.
He also criticized the current policy of the Central Bank for selling dollar for 28,500 tomans for imports and said that it is like the decision of President Rouhani government’s decision of selling dollar for 4200 tomans which was mocked and led to more corruption.
Shariati reiterated that preferential rate of forex will lead to rent-seeking and corruption and the Central Bank should take lesson from the past, reiterating that in the current economic condition, exporters will be loser of this policy and expressed hope soon businesses in the country would pick up.
