Out of the total checks issued during the month, 717,400 checks valued 112 trillion rials ($957 million) bounced – up 16.3% and 19.2% in volume and value, respectively, compared with a month earlier when banks returned 617,000 bad checks worth 94 trillion rials ($803 million).
About 7.8 million checks worth 1,006 trillion rials ($8.6 billion) were drawn in the month, registering 18.5% increase in number and 19.5% rise in value compared to a month earlier.
The data covered only interbank checks processed by Chekavak, a CBI affiliate electronic check processing system, according to Financial Tribune.
Bounced checks accounted for 9.3% of the total checks in volume and 11.1% in value in the month.
A total of 223,000 checks worth 56 trillion rials ($478.6 million) bounced in the capital alone, which constituted 31% and 49.9% of all bounced checks, respectively, in terms of volume and value.
Almost 8.4% of all transacted checks and 10.6% of the total value of checks in the capital were returned.
About 2.7 million checks worth 526 trillion rials ($4.5 billion) changed hands during the month in Tehran Province.
Kurdistan Province had the highest ratio of bounced checks to transacted checks. Of all drawn checks, 17.1% bounced in the western province.
This was followed by Sistan and Baluchestan Province at 15% and Semnan and Qom provinces jointly each at 14.7%.
Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad had the lowest ratio of bounced checks, with 5.7% of the total bad checks.
About 688,000 checks worth 104 trillion rials ($888 million) bounced due to insufficient funds in accounts of issuers.
Cleared Checks
More than 7 million checks worth 894 trillion rials ($7.2 billion) were cleared by banks during the month under review, showing an 18.7% and 19.5% increase in the volume and value of checks, respectively, compared to the previous month.
The figure accounted for 90.7% of the total number and 88.9% of the total value of checks.
In the same month, 2.4 million checks worth 470 trillion rials ($4 billion) were cashed in Tehran Province, accounting for 91.6% of the total volume and 89.4% of total value of checks transacted in the capital, which is home to the head offices of all major businesses in the country of 80 million people.