Iran’s Bank Melli leading supporter of SMEs, startups: CEO
Iran’s largest lender Bank Melli (BMI) has offered huge support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startups, says the top man in the bank.
Bank Melli’s CEO Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh said on Saturday that the bank had provided tens of billions of rials in funds to industry owners, SMEs, services and commercial units in the past Iranian calendar year which ended in March.
Hosseinzadeh said startups and the so-called knowledge-based companies had also “benefitted” from the support offered by Bank Melli.
The official would not elaborate on exact figures and the interest rate of the loans given to the Iranian SMEs and startups.
However, he said that it was a policy of Bank Melli to support manufacturing and production activities to help government decrease unemployment and inflation in Iran at a time the country is struggling with economic impacts of sanctions imposed by the United States.
“I believe that if the sanctions are to be circumvented, that could only be accomplished by an active private sector,” said Hosseinzadeh, adding, “Our duty is to ... empower the private sector through offering them an all-out support.”
The BMI is the first national and commercial retail bank of Iran which is currently viewed as the largest bank in the Islamic world and in the Middle East. Estimates in 2016 showed the bank earned over $3 billion in income, the largest recorded for an Iranian company that year.
The bank is a major component of Iranian government’s development plans as it holds huge resources that could be used for financing construction projects across the country.
Bank Melli has suffered from bans imposed by the US in its previous round of sanctions which ended in 2015 when Iran and world powers reached a major nuclear agreement.
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