Indian oil payment backlog with Iran to be cleared soon

Indian oil refiners will clear around 6 billion euros (USD6.7 bln) of outstanding debt to Iran through Turkey's Halkbank within a short period, a senior Iranian economy official said on June 1. 

India is one of the biggest buyers of Iranian crude and built up a payments backlog when Iran was under Western sanctions, with its refiners owing about USD6.5 billion to Iran. They cleared around USD770 million in euros through Halkbank to the National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) earlier in May.

"As per the instructions of the Central Bank of Iran, the local banks in India will transfer the money to Halkbank," Sadegh Akbari, Iran's general director for foreign economic relations, told reporters at a conference in Istanbul.