“We are trying to help these companies,” Sapin told reporters at a joint press conference with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Tayebnia, in Tehran, Bloomberg reported.
“They will be able to apply for loans, but it’s not active yet. We are working on this,” he added.
Sapin said he was “confident” that banking relations between Tehran and Paris would be normalized in due time and said he was seeking clarification from the US government on the extent to which its sanctions will impact French banks working with Iran.
French companies were among the first to return to Iran after anti-Tehran sanctions were removed last year under a nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) reached the nuclear deal in July 2015 and implemented it in January last year.