BAKU, Azerbaijan, December 20. On December 19, 2023, up to $212 million in various currencies were exchanged at Iran's Currency and Gold Exchange Center using the NIMA exchange rate, Trend reports.
Data from Iran’s Central Bank shows that a total of $354 million in foreign currency was put up for sale at the center under the NIMA rate on the mentioned day.
The Currency and Gold Exchange Center was founded in Iran on February 21, 2023, to prevent a sudden increase in the price of foreign currency on the black market.
The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) established the NIMA system in 2018 to allow exporters to sell a portion of their export earnings to banks in order to alleviate the country's foreign currency shortages caused by numerous factors (sanctions, economic conditions, etc.).
In this system, exporters who earn more than one million euros from exports a year must sell a portion of their export earnings to banks at the NIMA rate. Later, banks used to sell foreign currency to importers for the import of several products at this rate.
The Central Bank of Iran has not imposed rules on exporters that earn less than one million euros a year.
Those with total exports of 1-3 million euros per year are required to offer 50 percent of their received foreign exchange to the government through the NIMA system.
The traders with annual exports of three to ten million euros are obliged to offer 70 percent. Those with exports above ten million euros per year must offer 90 percent of the received foreign exchange at NIMA.
There are four exchange rates in Iran:
The official exchange rate, where $1 equals 42,000 Iranian rials and 1 euro equals 46,110 rials in Iran, is used for the import of some essential products.
The SANA system is a currency exchange system implemented by the Central Bank of Iran in which the price of one euro is 471,441 rials and the price of one dollar is 429,420 rials.
NIMA is a scheme for selling a percentage of the foreign money earned from exports. The price of 1 euro in this system is 428,583 rials, and the price of $1 is 390,382 rials.
The black market, where $1 is worth about 497,000–500,000 rials, while 1 euro is worth about 546,000–549,000 rials.
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