The Centre has extended the deadline to resolve the payment crisis for Iranian crude to July 15. According to Mr U.K. Basu, Managing Director of Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL), a recent meeting between officials of the Union Government and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) worked out a “joint action plan” to establish the new payment mechanism by July 15.
India has not paid for Iranian imports since the first week of April following discontinuation of the payment gateway through a Hamburg-based bank leading to $2-billion overdue. MRPL, the largest importer of Iranian crude, is currently running a payment outstanding of over $1 billion.
Mr Basu told reporters on the sidelines of an Assocham meeting here on Friday that NIOC has assured to continue uninterrupted supply till the new mechanism was put in place.
He said a joint Indo-Iranian team would “visit” certain third countries, but stopped short of explaining whether the visits would be for finalising deal with a new bank that would route the payments to NIOC.
The problem arose on December 23 last year when the Reserve Bank of India dictated that payments to Iran would have to be settled outside the existing Asian Clearing Union (ACU) mechanism. Iran had earlier been insisting that it would not trade outside the ACU mechanism.
Mr Basu said Iranian officials, who were in the Capital recently, held discussions with the Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and the RBI.
Mr Basu said that MRPL this year was likely to overshoot the contracted import figure of 7.1 million tonnes. “Last year, we had imported close to 7.5 million tonnes and this year also we would perhaps end up importing in a similar quantity”.