washington the united states has praised indias recent steps to tighten sanctions on iran by barring its companies from a range of deals which are transacted though a key tradefinance clearing house this is a significant action by india the treasury departments point man on iran sanctions stuart levey was quoted as saying by the wall street journal leveys statement comes days after the reserve bank of india instructed its banks to stop processing current account transactions using the asian clearing union acu headquartered in tehran acu was set up by the un in 1974 to help facilitate trade in the region india is irans biggest trading partner in business done through acu besides rbi it includes central banks of bangladesh the maldives burma iran pakistan bhutan nepal and sri lanka on friday rbi said indian firms cant use the acu mechanism when making payments for the import of oil or gas in view of the difficulties being experienced by importersexporters in payments toreceipts from iran it has been decided that all eligible current account transactions including trade transactions with iran should be settled in any permitted currency outside the acu mechanism until further notice rbi said in another statement monday while that order didnt explicitly mention iran the islamic republic is the only major crude exporter in the acu the daily said levey said the latest rbi move will make clear to indian companies that working through the acu doesnt necessarily mean an iranian counterpart has an international seal of approval rbi had asked importers to settle their accounts in currencies other than dollar and euro the journal said in january 2009 irans government advised local and indian companies to use the acu as a way of avoiding international sanctions and the us banking system iranian exporters to india and indian exporters to iran no longer need to fret over the us embargo on dollar transactions read a january 2009 englishlanguage report on irans stateowned fars news agency by resorting to the asian clearing union mechanism for importexport transactions exporters from the two countries can not only realize their receivables but also sidestep the us banking system altogether it said according to the daily indias move could also disrupt its trade with other countries in november india used the acu to conduct significant transactions with sri lanka and bangladesh the paper said