Iran has enough gold for next 15 years

Governor of Iran's Central Bank, Mahmoud Bahmani said that the country has enough of gold reserves to last for another 15 years, the official website of Iran's government reported.

"To protect country's economy, Irah has increased its gold reserves by 12 times in the last 5 years," Bahmani noted.

Speaking of international sanctions affecting Iran's economy, Bahmani said that Iran has prevented a serious blow to its economy with having enough gold reserves, high oil prices and reduced goods imports.

"We can't say the sanctions did not harm us. They do, however, there was not a serious damage made to Iranian economy," he said.

The CBI head said that the gold reserves would be enough for Iran, and the country does not intend to barter it for any goods in the future.

In early 2012, the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on Iran's oil and financial sectors with the goal of preventing other countries from purchasing Iranian oil and conducting transactions with the Iranian Central Bank. The sanctions came into force in early summer 2012.

On October 15, the EU foreign ministers reached an agreement on another round of sanctions against Iran.

The sanctions were imposed based on the suspicions that Iran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Iran rejects the allegations, arguing that as a committed signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.


/Trend/