Iran firms ditch Chinese for Europeans
Iran’s petrochemical manufacturers are turning to the Europeans to get finance for new projects, ditching Chinese investors who are charging high commissions and fees.
So far, two petrochemical entities have abandoned plans to source funds from the Chinese and decided to use European finances instead, director of projects at the National Petrochemical Company (NPC) Marzieh Shah-Daei said on Tuesday.
“These two cases involve the projects for which the allocation of the Chinese financing has not been finalized yet,” she told the IRNA news agency.
China’s restrictive terms for financing energy projects have prompted some Iranian manufacturers to look for investors elsewhere.
In August, Deputy Petroleum Minister Abbas She’ri-Moqaddam didn’t mince his words when he said he preferred Japanese, European and even American investors to the Chinese.
Under an agreement, China uses Iran’s oil money, which Tehran cannot easily repatriate due to sanctions, to finance projects in the Middle Eastern country.
Former central bank governor and economy minister Tahmasb Mazaheri has said Iran often faced a myriad of problems to access its own funds in China.
“Project owners awaiting finance prefer not to get it from China because it is expensive due to high fees,” Shah-Daei said on Tuesday.
She said Chinese investors force clients to source 50-70% of equipment from the Asian country. “This is while we can get 70% of the equipment needed inside Iran.”
Iran’s petrochemical sector requires $70-80 billion of investment over the next decade, state officials have said.
They say companies from Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan and even the US have indicated readiness to participate in Iran’s petrochemical projects.
Some Iranian petrochemical entities are currently in the process of receiving funds from Germany and Spain and “negotiations with respective foreign parties have been finalized, pending official removal of sanctions”, Shah-Daei said.
Spanish companies are more forthcoming, especially those which used to work with Iranian entities before, she added.
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