US sanctions jeopardize India-Iran trade payments

Indian rice and soya bean exporters have been unable to sign contracts with Iran owing to the ambivalence after US ended the waiver on sanctions against Iran. They requested the government to issue guidelines about the system of payments for exporters. The worst hit traders are the rice & soya bean exporters.

Iran has been one of the largest buyers (30% of total basmati exports) of India’s basmati rice and has also been a major destination for the export of soya bean meal; importing 1/4^th of the 1.5 million tons of soya bean meal exported from India. Exporters are currently receiving payments from the UCO Bank. But they have been informally asked to refrain from letter of credit (LC) transactions due to the threat of new US sanctions.