July 04, 2007	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 18, 1428

TEHRAN, July 3: Iran admitted on Tuesday that international sanctions imposed over its controversial nuclear programme were harming its ability to invest in oil infrastructure, the backbone of its economy.

“The problems that they have made for banks have troubled financing of some projects,” Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh told the official IRNA news agency.

He said that the government was attempting to use its own resources, built up from windfall receipts resulting from the high world oil prices of recent years, to make up for the shortfalls in foreign investment.

“The government makes a decision in this respect using internal resources and the Oil Stabilisation Fund,” into which the government invests oil income that exceed the needs of normal state expenditures, the minister said.

The UN sanctions so far have been largely focussed on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, but Washington has been putting pressure on international banks to curtail their business in US dollars with Iran.

In response to mounting US pressure, Iran said it would stop pricing its oil in dollars and replace the US currency with the euro in foreign transactions and state-held foreign assets.

But the existing sanctions and the looming threat of tougher ones have sparked concerns about investment risks in Iran, which needs foreign investment and know-how to develop its oil and gas infrastructure.

For years, Iran has been under unilateral US economic sanctions, which bar American oil companies from doing business with Iran and could punish foreign energy companies investing more than $20 million in its oil industry.—AFP