IRAN - Financing & Income Prospects.

In promoting its new projects, NPC says its export earnings would rise to $2 bn/year by fiscal 2005/06 and these should rise to $4 bn/year in current US dollars by the end of the plan in fiscal 2013/14. This is one of the key points NPC uses in securing project finance NPC's exports in fiscal 2000 which ended on March 20, 2001, were worth about $800m in hard currency.

Another key point is NPC's good reputation abroad, as it has serviced its debts on time. In the early 1990s year-long letters of credit had to be strung end-to-end. With Dresdner Kleinwort Benson advising it on how to tap financial markets, foreign companies and their national export credit agencies, NPC is counting mainly on German, French and Italian banks to syndicate loans (see background in Vol. 56, No. 15).

On the other hand, the need for NPC to secure project finance is limited thanks to its buy-back approach to foreign contractors having to fund the projects they build. For each BBC required in projects not involving equity, the contractor has to include full or partial funding - depending on NPC's available cash resources.

In promoting its projects to potential foreign and local partners, contractors and financiers, NPC is holding annual conferences in Tehran. Its 5th Iran Petrochemical Forum is to be held in Tehran on May 17-18, 2003. Follow up workshop on Iran's petrochemicals sector will be included in the 16th Annual APS Conference, Middle East Strategy to the Year 2015, to be held in Tehran on Sept. 27-28, 2003. With NPC's top management as well as Iranian and Arab petroleum VIPs to address the APS event, the organisers will offer the participants a guided tour of SPEZ and ParsEE and petroleum installations on Sept. 29. (For bookings, apply to APS Conferences, APS House, P.O. Box 23896, email: [e-mail] - website: www.aps-energygroup.com)

Iran's first petrochemical plant, 70,000 t/y of fertilisers, was built in 1964 for the Commerce Ministry. Through the years, this became part of NPC which grew as a subsidiary of the Oil Ministry's NIOC. In 1990 the petrochemical industry began a period of rapid annual growth (see Iran's existing petrochemical plants in the April 1999 survey in Vol. 52, No. 14).