Headquarters Tehran, Iran Member economies 9 | Type Clearing union Establishment 1974 | |
The Asian Clearing Union (ACU), with headquarters in Tehran, Iran, was established on December 9, 1974 at the initiative of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). The primary objective of ACU, at the time of its establishment, was to secure regional co-operation as regards the settlement of eligible monetary transactions among the members of the Union to provide a system for clearing payments among the member countries on a multilateral basis.
Contents
In October 2013, Iran unveiled a plan suggesting that members of the union – Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Iran – employ a home-grown system developed by the Central Bank of Iran to get around SWIFT called SEPAM in Persian.
Members
Currently (2016), the members of ACU are the central banks of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. The central banking authority of member countries has issued detailed instructions and modalities for channeling the monetary transactions through the ACU. Membership in the ACU is open to central banks located in the geographical area of ESCAP.
Unit
The unit of settlement of ACU transactions is a common unit of account of ACU, and the unit is equivalent to one USD, and the Asian Monetary Unit may be denominated as ACU dollars and Euro dollars.
Eligible transactions
All eligible transactions between member countries are required to be settled through the Asian Clearing Union. The monetary transactions eligible to be settled through the Asian Clearing Union includes the following:
Ineligible transactions
The payments not eligible for settlement though the Asian Clearing Union include the following: -