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.
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said Taiwan’s government plans to set up a business service company in Kyushu, Japan, to help Taiwanese companies operating there. “The company will follow the one-stop service model similar to the science parks we have in Taiwan,” Kuo said. “As each prefecture is providing different conditions, we will establish a new company providing services and helping Taiwanese companies swiftly settle in Japan.” Kuo did not specify the exact location of the planned company but said it would not be in Kumamoto, the Kyushu prefecture in which Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, 台積電) has a
China has threatened severe economic retaliation against Japan if Tokyo further restricts sales and servicing of chipmaking equipment to Chinese firms, complicating US-led efforts to cut the world’s second-largest economy off from advanced technology. Senior Chinese officials have repeatedly outlined that position in recent meetings with their Japanese counterparts, people familiar with the matter said. Toyota Motor Corp privately told officials in Tokyo that one specific fear in Japan is that Beijing could react to new semiconductor controls by cutting the country’s access to critical minerals essential for automotive production, the people said, declining to be named discussing private affairs. Toyota is among
RSS