Austria agreed on Wednesday to significantly increase its export guarantees for deals with Iran during a visit by Valiollah Seif, the governor of Iran’s Central Bank (CBI), two people familiar with the matter said, Reuters reported on Thursday.
The report added that the government will raise the total amount of guarantees that Oesterreichische Kontrollbank (OeKB), Austrian export credit agency, can provide to roughly 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) from more than 200 million euros.
"It is about saying that it is possible to do significantly more than before," said one of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks between Iranian and Austrian officials were confidential.
Senior Iranian and Austrian bankers met in Vienna on Wednesday to discuss resumption of trade financing.
The meeting took place at the Austrian central bank after the governors of the two nations’ central banks, Valiollah Seif and Ewald Nowotny, met on Tuesday.
Austria’s top three banks Erste Group Bank AG, UniCredit Bank Austria AG and Raiffeisen Bank International AG were among the participants.
There has been growing interest in ties with Iran since Tehran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) on July 14, 2015 reached an agreement on Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and started implementing it on January 16.
The agreement terminated all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran.