The fine for selling counterfeit car parts will be increased by 16 times and sellers will be blacklisted, a deputy industries minister announced.
Mohammad Mehdi Baradaran added that once counterfeit parts are identified, the blacklisting will set a bad precedent for the seller and disrupt their business throughout the country, Donyaye Khodro reported.
It has been a few months since the product identification project started. Although producers consider this plan effective for eliminating counterfeit and non-standard products, they are not satisfied with its implementation.
Manufacturers of brake pads, for instance, say the plan has created numerous problems in the market and reduced their sales, as sellers of counterfeit and smuggled pads refuse to implement this plan and announce their purchase price.
The deputy minister noted that the auto spare parts market is one of the most non-transparent markets in the country, where smuggled goods abound, after-sales services are not provided, the origin of parts is not known and customer satisfaction is low.
"But fortunately, the confiscation of non-standard and counterfeit auto parts is rising with the cooperation of most manufacturers, the information gathered so far and public reports, which have increased customer satisfaction," he said.
Baradaran stressed that if the insurance company determines that an accident is due to the use of non-standard parts, it will not pay compensation and as per the law, are entitled to refuse compensation in such cases.
“Therefore, users should be careful and refuse to use fake or unofficial pads just because they are cheaper,” he said
Auto Spare Parts Top Contraband
Automotive spare parts topped the list of smuggled goods in the fiscal 2021-22 (ended March 20), according to Spokesman of the Headquarters to Combat Smuggling of Goods and Foreign Exchange Hamid Reza Dehqani-Nia.
He announced that $17.1 billion worth of smuggled goods entered the country in the fiscal 2020-21.
The spokesman noted that after car spare parts, food was the second largest category of contraband last year, while computer equipment and home appliances respectively ranked third and fourth in the fiscal 2021-22, the news portal of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture reported.
According to Dehqani-Nia, many household appliances in the Iranian market are counterfeit.
"These products are Iranian goods fabricated or repaired in unofficial workshops and sold in the domestic market as foreign and banned brands," he said, without mentioning the value of smuggled car spare parts.
Mohammad Reza Najafi-Manesh, a member of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture and chairman of the Association of Homogeneous Propulsion Industries and Component Manufacturers, said although car spare parts topped the list of smuggled goods, it is not clear how much was smuggled into the country and how many were produced by underground and unofficial domestic units.
“The problem with evaluating this volume of smuggling is that it is not clear how much of these goods were imported and how much was produced illegally. In other words, if a product is found to be illegal, it may have been smuggled into the country, or illegally produced by unlicensed units inside the country,” he added.
Najafi-Manesh noted that another problem is that the size of the spare parts market in Iran is not known.
“Therefore, it was decided that ISACO, SAIPA Yadak and the Association of Homogeneous Propulsion Industries and Component Manufacturers cooperate to examine the volume of the spare parts market and determine how much of it is domestic and what percentage comprises counterfeit production and smuggling,” he added.
In the field of auto parts, domestic car batteries and tires were obliged to have ID and tracking codes, and it was decided that 55 other commodities produced by 173 domestic companies would receive ID and tracking codes.
Najafi-Manesh noted that Iran has 1,500 car component and spare parts producers.
