MNA � The governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has announced the launch of an organized market to keep the prices in the foreign currencies exchange market down.

Speaking to the Iranian state TV channel 2 (IRIB) last night, the Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Abdolnaser Hemmati said that during past few weeks the prices of foreign currencies against the Iranian national currency-the rial- has risen about 10%, due to some developments in the political and economic areas, including the arrival of the new Iranian year and the usual increase in demands for foreign currencies by the Iranian citizens for holidays purposes abroad as well as the lack of action in approving the FATF-related bills by the Iranian Expediency Council, so far.

Yesterday, the Expediency Council postponed the decision on the two FATF-related bills of Countering the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) and UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNODC), for next Iranian year of 1398, which begins on March 21.

Hemmati told IRIB 2 last night that the central bank has supplied $ 38 billion through the formal exchange market called NIMA and state-owned exchange shops to importers of basic goods over the past months, which has resulted in keeping the prices in the previously volatile exchange market down.

As it has previously announced, the CBI governor reported of a new measure to further bring down the prices in the exchange market, which have recently gone up due to the reasons mentioned above, in the form of an organized market, which according to Hemmati, is a mixture of the formal market and the free market.

The CBI governor added that necessary steps have been taken so far to launch the organized market within next two weeks, but, Hemmati said that the central bank preferred to postpone the launch of the new mechanism until the final days of the first month of the new year.

Meanwhile, the top Iranian banking official said that five banks which are country owned by the armed forces will be merged into a previously existing state-owned Bank Sepah in a bid to have a more stable and healthier banking system in the country.