for India to pay for the Iranian oil it buys, but the meetings came up empty.
Hamid Borhani, the deputy governor of the Iranian Central Bank, said on arrival Monday that he felt sure the meetings would produce an agreement on Tuesday.
They didn’t, and no explanation was given.
Mohsen Ghamsari, head of international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC), said the two countries were trying to find a new bank that could handle the payments despite US banking restrictions.
But Indian officials long ago indicate their efforts to find such a bank had produced nothing.
Indian officials announced they were working on a plan to allow India to pay for oil in Indian rupees. The rupee is a non-convertible currency. Iran would receive huge quantities of rupees each year that it would have to spend in India.
India is currently buying about $14 billion worth of Iranian oil annually while Iran spent only $1 billion on India products last year. The rupee idea did not look like it would be attractive to Iran, but Iranian officials have stayed silent about the idea.
Ghamsari said India currently owes Iran about $2 billion for oil delivered since the old payment mechanism was shut off in late December. That sounded low. At current purchasing rates, India has bought about $5.8 billion in oil since December and has said it made one payment of $2.1 billion through a bank that is now shut off by European sanctions. That would mean India would owe Iran about $3.7 billion.