The Iranian government will sell its stake in the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Corporation (PGPIC), in what is expected to be the largest divestment in the country’s asset sale program.

The head of the Iranian Privatization Organization, Hossein Ghorbanzadeh, said on Sunday that the government’s stake in PGPIC, which amounts to 18% of the company’s total shares, will be sold through a listing on the local stock market in the near future.

Ghorbanzadeh said the divestiture will be the largest in Iranian history if the sale takes place as a single block.

“Naturally, this will be the largest sale in the history of the government shareholdings in terms of the rial,” the official said without specifying the value of the company in the official Iranian currency.

Iran’s Oil Ministry holds majority shares in PGPIC, the second-largest petrochemical company in the Middle East and one of the most profitable in the world.

The holding company controls a group of large petrochemical and chemical plants in Iran, many of which rely on the country’s vast natural gas reserves located in the Persian Gulf.

PGPIC has been blacklisted by the United States as part of Washington’s efforts to deprive Iran of its lucrative oil revenues.

However, the company’s sales growth over the past three years has played a major role in Iran’s efforts to offset the impacts of US sanctions on the country’s economy.

Speaking to the official IRNA news agency, Ghorbanzadeh said another option to sell the government’s stake in PGPIC would be to offer the shares in three large blocks, with each block containing 6% of the shares.

He said the government is supposed to sell assets worth 900 trillion rials ($ 3 billion) to fund the budget for the current calendar year that ends at the end of March.