TEHRAN, Dec. 29--Converting credit cooperatives into financial institutions will pave the way for establishing specialized cooperative banks.

Expressing this, Habib Roudsaz, former managing director of State Cooperative Fund, told ISNA on Friday that the new policies of the fund, which were adopted in the second half of the year to March 2007, mainly focus on cooperative companies involved in transportation and housing sectors.

“The fund provided the transportation cooperatives with 50 million rials in loans for purchasing each unit of light vehicles, 100 million rials for semi-heavy vehicles and 150 million rials for heavy ones,“ he said.

He put the total facilities extended by the fund to the cooperatives sector in March-November at 1.5 trillion rials, adding that the figure has increased by 120 percent compared to the amount for the corresponding period the previous year.

State Cooperative Fund managed to create 14,000 jobs during March-September, he observed.

“Under the general policies of the Article 44 of the Constitution, two specialized cooperative banks should be established, one of them would be a state-run bank known as the ’cooperative development bank’ and the other a private bank titled ’cooperative bank’,“ he noted.

Once the financial institutions replace credit cooperatives, the scene will be set for establishing the latter, he said, adding that the cooperatives minister has the final say in setting up the state-owned cooperative bank.

Roudsaz reiterated that one of the options was to convert the fund into the said state-run bank, which would finally be decided upon by the minister and the head of the fund.

He further disclosed that the fund is ready for such a drastic change.