Iran’s deputy minister of economic affairs and finance has said the country’s foreign debts are currently very insignificant at nearly zero, Tasnim News Agency reported on January 20.
Utilising foreign debt could be a good opportunity for the government to meet investment needs inside Iran, Mohammad-Ali Dehqan Dehnavi added.
Separately, Iran’s currency strengthened to a five-month high against the dollar on January 20 on market hopes that new US President Joe Biden would be able to reach an agreement with Tehran to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, a development that would lead to the removal of heavy US sanctions imposed by his predecessor Donald Trump on the Islamic Republic. Iran has suffered three years of recession in the face of what it describes as Trump’s “economic war”.
The value of the dollar on Iran’s unregulated, open market was down to Iranian rial (IRR) 229,500 by the end of trading in Tehran on January 20, with the Iranian currency taking its gain against the USD since January 6 to 17%, according to currency trading website Bonbast.com.
The rial has lost more than 70% of its value since May 2018, when Trump abandoned the nuclear accord and introduced a sanctions regime against Iran unprecedented in its scope and economic impact. During the course of the four-year Trump presidency, the rial lost 80% against the greenback.
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