Page 29 - IRANRptOct21

‘Post Trump’ Iran will not be free for all foreign investors, oil minister warns
2019.
Iran saw FDI inflows of $3.37bn and $5.01bn in 2016 and 2017 after the signing of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. However, foreign investors turned away from Iran after former US president Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the deal in May 2018 and warned such investors that they could face secondary sanctions if they continued to do business with the Islamic Republic. The FDI inflow fell to $2.37bn in 2018, UNCTAD said.
The UN body also estimated Iran's direct investment in other countries at $78mn in coronavirus-afflicted 2020, 8% lower than the $85mn seen the year before.
Iran has lately been posting data showing it is emerging from a recession that lasted almost three years, with the introduction of Trump’s swingeing sanctions the main factor in the economic decline.
‘Post-Trump’ Iran will not be a free-for-all when it comes to foreign investment, the country’s oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh has warned.
Foreign companies looking to re-enter the country would be required to work under conditions different to those they secured prior to leaving Iran after the re-introduction of heavy US sanctions against Tehran by US President Donald Trump from 2018, Tasnim news agency reported Zanganeh as saying on January 11. He spoke with hopes rising that US President-elect Joe Biden, set to take office on January 20, will find an arrangement with Tehran that allows him to lift the Trump sanctions.
Prior to the Trump sanctions crackdown, Iran made it easier for foreign companies—including French energy major Total and China’s China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC)—to take control of foreign investment projects; however after the Trump sanctions caused foreign investors to flee the country, local companies found themselves alone, struggling to fill the vacuum.
“If foreign companies come [to Iran], we will cooperate with them, but it doesn’t mean that we will abandon what we have achieved [alone during the Trump era],” he said, as reported by Iran’s official energy news agency SHANA. Foreign investors that arrived in Iran for a second time would find a country that has managed to indigenise much of what companies from abroad were bringing to Iran, Zanganeh said.
"Sanctions are mortal and will be gone, but we will not give up on the capacities we have created and we will organise and strengthen them," he added.
Taking oil as an example, Zanganeh also said: “Today's capacity to sell oil, transfer oil and receive oil money is in no way comparable to what was the case back in March 2018 and the beginning of the sanctions. We will not allow these capacities to be lost. We are organising these capacities.”
29 IRAN Country Report October 2021 www.intellinews.com