Dr. Farhad Morsali, Head of IAIF’s International Committee, said the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) is not for Iran and is a subset of one of the UN commissions. There is a commission in the United Nations under the title (ESCAP), which is the largest commission among the members of the United Nations. This commission is in the field of social and economic activities and is related to Asia and the Pacific region. 58 main members are from Asia and Pacific region and 4 observer members are United States, United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France. This commission has several sub-organizations, one of which is ACU. This institution is for Clearing.

Several companies or countries form the union and after determining the settlement period they have a series of financial transactions together and at the end of this period the accounts are cleared with each other and the remainder is referred to the settlement stage.

He further stated that in 1930, there was a need to form these unions due to the lack of foreign currency reserves of the countries. The EPU was formed in 1950 and this union was established in 1974 at the suggestion of Iran. The important point is that according to ACU’s charter, countries outside the Asia and Pacific region can also become members.

Central banks are members of ACU, but other financial institutions cannot become members. This union has a board of directors whose members are governors of central banks or monetary supervisory bodies of countries.

Morsali mentioned the purpose of creating this union is to facilitate multilateral payment settlement; it is the use of local currencies of that region and the improvement of the multilateral level between the members.

He went on to say that some important points of these unions are as follows:

•Each union has several accounting units, and in ACU we have three accounting units: dollar (ACU), yen (ACU) and euro (ACU). These units are priced based on their original unit.

• Any type of monetary transfer among members can be done through the mechanism of ACU.

• Payment instruments in this mechanism can be check, cash, (LC) or any payment instrument can be used in settlement of ACU.

• There is a messaging system in the world called Swift. In ACU there is also a messaging system called MMM. The accounting books are updated every day and sent to the members weekly and monthly and the members inform the secretariat if there is a discrepancy after checking the accounts.

• The currency conversion rate is based on the (SDR) announced on the website of IMF

• Union reports are published monthly and annually.

• There are two types of events in this union, the first is the meeting of the board of directors, which is held once a year, and the meeting of the technical committee, which is held twice a year.