A Chinese state-owned investment firm has provided a US$10 billion credit line for Iranian banks, Iran’s central bank president said on Saturday.
The contract was signed in Beijing between CITIC (中國中信) investment group and a delegation of Iranian banks led by central bank president Valiollah Seif.
The Iran Daily said the funds would finance water, energy and transport projects.
Photo: Reuters
Iran is vital to China’s trade ambitions as it develops its trillion-dollar “One Belt, One Road” strategy aimed at dramatically boosting its ties to Europe and Africa.
China is already Iran’s biggest oil customer and accounts for one-thirds of its overall trade.
Bilateral trade was just US$31 billion last year, but the figure jumped more than 30 percent in the first six months of this year.
In addition to the credit line, the Export-Import Bank of China (中國進出口銀行) committed to a further US$10 billion in loans, while the China Development Bank (中國國家開發銀行) signed preliminary deals with Iran for US$15 billion in infrastructure and production projects, Seif said.
The contracts reflect “a strong will for continuation of cooperation between the two countries,” Seif said.
In total, China has agreed to allocate US$35 billion in financing and loans for Iran’s economy, state news agency IRNA quoted Seif as saying.
The credit line will use euros and yuan to help bypass US sanctions that have continued, despite the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in 2015.
Since the lifting of sanctions, Beijing has opened two credit lines worth US$4.2 billion to build high-speed railway lines linking Tehran with Mashhad and Isfahan, the Iran Daily reported.
The latest move follows an 8 billion euro (US$9.56 billion) credit deal signed with South Korea’s Exim bank last month.
European banks remain wary of penalties from Washington for working with Iran, but talks are said to be at an advanced stage for US$22 billion in credit deals with banks from Austria, Denmark and Germany.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
RSS