A press statement of the Central Bank of Iran said 108 companies had returned earnings from foreign sales worth $26 billion from March 2018 to mid-May this year.
“The 49 exporters appreciated had fully returned their earnings worth $22 billion,” the CBI Governor Abdolnasser Hemmati said on the sidelines of the ceremony.
The senior banker said the credit-worthy exporters will be incentivized with export facilities, such as scrapping the value added tax. No other details were available.
As per rules, exporters pay VAT but the tax is refunded to law-abiding exporters after they fulfill all their financial commitments, namely currency repatriation.
The government tightened export repatriation rules after persistent shortages of led to a turmoil in the domestic currency market. CBI officials earlier said exporters had not returned $27 billion in overseas earnings in the past two years. As a result the government resorted to reward and punishment to convince them to bring the money back.
Due to the US economic sanctions, many companies are finding it increasingly difficult to bring their money home via banks because most foreign financial institutions, fearing Donald Trump’s wrath, refuse to handle Iranian transactions.
Tough US penalties have cut off Tehran’s banking ties to the international banking network to the extent that the government too cannot transfer its oil export revenue home from most countries.
Judicial Action
Late in September the CBI said it had sent to the judiciary a third list of export companies who were in breach of their currency obligations.
The new list included the names of 1,033 exporters whose aggregate export repatriation commitment is €4.9 billion. The defaulting companies are those that failed to repatriate €1 million and above.
The bank had sent the names of defaulters to the judiciary in two lists. Unfulfilled financial commitment by exporters in the two lists was €6.8 billion.
Unruly exporters may face various penalties, including, but not limited to, suspension of commercial cards, closure of bank accounts, travel bans and impounding goods in the customs.
The CBI said exporters had failed to return their earnings before the timeline announced by the regulator expired. A July 21 deadline was announced to repatriate earnings from foreign sales or face the law.
As per available data, companies in the non-oil sector exported goods worth €56.1 billion over two years (April 2018 to June 2020).