An Iranian official said on Monday that the operating charters of several state-owned banks including Saderat, Sepah, Tejarat and Mellat will be amended. "The government is ready to cede the banks' shares to the public," said Deputy Minister of Economy and Finance for State-Owned Companies, Hamid Pourmohamadi.
According to IRNA, he said there are no restrictions on offering the share of these banks to the public. "We are only waiting for the legal document by the Expediency Council (EC) which has made a new interpretation of the article 44 of the constitution."
The directive outlines by the EC also keeps unchanged the status of other state-owned banks such as Melli, Sanat and Madan (Industry and Mines), Maskan (Housing) and Keshavarzi (Agriculture) for the time being. "It also authorizes a portion (65 percent) of the shares of the aforementioned banks to be sold to the private sector."
The reason for privatizing some of the banking institutions are that many of the services previously handled by the government banks are now a routine part of the operations of private banks. "This is indicative of the growing competitiveness of the domesticcapital markets," Pourmohammadi said. (menareport.com)
