October 04-2013
Iran has resumed payments on its loans from the World Bank, the bank said Friday.
The World Bank had announced in July that Iran had not made any payments for more than half a year.
Some saw that as a sign of the strain on the sanctions-hit Iranian economy. Others suggested Iran just saw repayments as an easy way to cut back on expenditures; since the bank is refusing to make any news loans, Tehran didn’t stand to lose anything by halting such payments.
At the time, Iran blamed Western sanctions for preventing an intermediary bank from forwarding funds to the global lender and insisted it wasn’t refusing to make the payments, an effort to assure the rest of the world that it wasn’t a defaulter.
All of the payments are for old loans, as Iran has not had a new World Bank program loan since 2005. Iran’s efforts to get new loans have been blocked by Washington.
It was not immediately clear why Iran stopped making payments in July, or why it resumed repayments on Friday. But the decision to stop payments was made under President Ahmadi-nejad and the decision to resume payments was made under President Rohani.
Iran’s total indebtedness to the World Bank comes to $616 million.