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Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Foreigners bought three times as many shares in Iran’s publicly traded companies in the past six months as they did a year earlier after the authorities changed the rules to attract international investors.

Foreigners invested $250 million in Iranian stocks since March 21, the beginning of the Iranian year, after investing $140 million in all of the preceding 12 months, Hassan Ghalibaf- Asl, the Tehran Stock Exchange’s president said in an interview in Paris after attending the annual meeting of the World Federation of Exchanges.

TSE’s benchmark index, the Tepix, has surged 63 percent year-to-date, making it the third-fastest growing primary index in the world, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

In April 2010, Iran introduced regulations to attract foreign investors. The rule changes enabled investors to repatriate their capital without any time restrictions. Under the previous rules, foreigners had to leave the principal of their investments in shares for three years.