Iranians Borrowing Heavily
Here’s an interesting notice I found posted today at the website of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website.
IRI's [Islamic Republic of Iran] foreign debt stood at dlrs 24.264 billion by the end of the previous Iranian calendar year 1384 (March 20, 2006), the Central Bank of Iran announced Sunday.According to the CBI figures, this included dlrs 13.578 billion of midterm and long-term debts as well as dlrs 10.686 billion of short-term debts. Iran's foreign debt stood at dlrs 16.831 billion in the Iranian year 1383.
I would have thought that with the price of oil so high during the past year that the Iranians would have been running a surplus, whereas their debt actually grew by nearly 50 percent! I wonder what their doing with all that money? The fact that, even with the high price of oil, they are having to borrow suggests that they are not in an ideal position to deal with possible UN sanctions that could impact their oil exports and access to foreign capital.
