Speaking on the sidelines of signing ceremony of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between National Development Fund and petroleum ministry, Qasemi said: Under the five year development plan terms, 50 billion dollars should be invested in upstream and downstream projects annually.

‘The contracts of those projects that part of their financial needs are going to be met by National Development Fund has been concluded’, the minister said adding funding the eligible projects will be started as of next week by allocating 5 billion dollars.

‘While the country is under sanctions, signing a MoU with National Development Fund for allocating 14 billion dollars to oil industry projects indicates that the country has enough financial resources to fund the projects’, according to Qasemi.

Qasemi said eligible projects for using financial resources are those that government’s stake in them does not go beyond 20 percent, adding the agreements on having access to National Development Fund’s resources will be signed between contractors on the one hand and agent banks on the other hand and after that National Development Fund will introduce private sector’s investors to agent banks for receiving needed resources.

On establishment an oil bank, Qasemi said petroleum ministry was pursuing the issue expressing hope Central Bank of Iran (CBI) to agree with the issue.