TEHRAN, Iran — Fam-Bank, a company in charge of selling excess properties held by Iranian banks, was set to hold a major public auction March 8. However, the auction was delayed for unannounced reasons. No specific date has so far been announced for the auction, which was to involve over 500 plots and buildings with a combined valuation of 26 trillion rials ($861 million). The auction is the 11th of its kind since Fam-Bank was jointly established by the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance in 2008.

Fam-Bank managing director Hassan Yamani says his company has sold 5.5 trillion rials ($182.1 million) worth of properties held by banks since its founding — a sum that is far too little to shore up the lumbering banking industry. Yamani blames this on the lack of cooperation of certain banks, namely Mellat and Maskan.

In June 2015, while Iran was still under severe economic and financial sanctions, the CBI called on banks to list their excess properties for sale. In a Feb. 20 interview with the Eqtesad News website, Parsian Bank CEO Kourosh Parvizian said Iranian banks, too, were "eager to sell surplus properties, as the move would boost their financial status and enable them to provide more loans.” However, in practice, banks have either resisted selling their assets or seen the sluggish property market prevent them from converting their fixed assets into cash. For instance, Bank Melli — the largest bank in Iran — has tried to sell 8.8 trillion rials ($291.4 million) worth of its properties in the current Iranian fiscal year ending March 19, but has only been able to raise 1.3 trillion rials ($43 million) of that amount, due to weak demand.

Bahaeddin Hosseini Hashemi, a former CEO of Bank Saderat, argues that the failure of this policy is largely due to its timing. “Recession is still there in the housing market, and the loan terms, hovering about three years, must last much longer,” he said in a recent interview with leading economic magazine Tejarat-e Farda. He also criticized banks for having “so many” branches in the country, urging them to be merged and for excess branch buildings to be sold under 10-year contracts and at low interest rates.