Big Exporters Delay Forex Repatriation

EghtesadOnline: A total of 363 companies are responsible for the majority of the unreturned overseas export income, an official with Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization said.

News ID: ۷۸۶۵۹۸

05 July 2021

“They have not repatriated forex income worth €11.1 billion or about 65% of the total unreturned money,” the TPO website quoted Ehsan Qamari as saying.

While the group is biggest to be in breach, it accounts for barely 1% of the total exporters. The defaulters are among big exporters whose export repatriation commitment is above €10 million. They comprise 79 production units and 284 non-manufacturing export companies.

“Defaulting manufactures account for €2.3 billion of the unfulfilled export repatriation commitment. The share of non-manufacturers is €8.8 billion,” Qamari said.

Out of the total of 24,698 non-oil exporters, 243 have export repatriation commitment worth between €5-10 million. “In sum, they have not yet brought back €1.7 billion.”

Manufacturing companies in latter group account for €700 million of pending commitments and non-manufacturing exporters are in breach of €1 billion of unreturned export currency income.  According to Qamari, this group accounts for 10% of total unreturned currency income.

Majority of the export income repatriation was by small  exporters. Required to return €32 billion, 22,972 exporters fulfilled their commitment worth $30 billion, accounting for 51% of total export income repatriation commitment.

As per an earlier TPO announcement, exporters were required to repatriate income worth €62 billion in three years from April 2018 to March 2021.

The TPO announced rules in April that seemingly eased currency repatriation rules for exporters. It announced a  mechanism, the so-called “import in exchange for export” to reform rules for bring back non-oil export forex revenue that long had been a bone of contention between export firms and the CBI.

As per rules passed last October, exporters can use part of their earning to import goods, raw material and machinery either for their own needs or for a third party under “currency barter between exporters and importers”.

Non-oil exporters had to bring back 80% of their earnings in foreign exchange hawala and sell it via the secondary foreign exchange market, known as Nima.  They also can sell a maximum of 20% of their currency to authorized exchange shops.

Nima is an online platform affiliated to the CBI where exporters sell their overseas currency income and companies buy for import.

New TPO rules exempt a limited number of companies from selling their income at Nima. Major petrochemical, metal and similar commodity companies are excluded from the exemption.