Despite Iranian officials’ promises of helping realize the import of 200,000 cars per annum, so far only around 5,000 cars have trickled in, most of which are of Chinese origin, an expert said in an interview with the automotive website Donyaye Khodro.
“The government expects to control the car market [especially car prices] by only talking, but we have seen on several occasions that talks not backed by efforts give rise to opposite results. A similar move was made by the previous government that talked about imports and left it at that, which resulted in a dramatic increase in prices by several hundred percent,” said Mehdi Dadfar, secretary of Car Importers Association.
“If the authorities were to act responsibly toward all car buyers, they should show it in practice. By simply saying that the ban on car imports has been lifted and people could make advance payments will not affect the market the way actual imports would,” he added.
Dadfar said some officials of the Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade insist on saying that car imports are being carried out, but if that was the case, at least one of the authorized companies in the field would have talked about this matter.
“As of today, there has been no news about any significant car imports. If that was the case, both the government officials and car importers would have informed the people but unfortunately, according to available statistics, fewer than 2,000 cars, other than Chinese products, are lying in the country's customs,” he said.
Asked whether the Industries Ministry could fulfill its promise of importing 200,000 cars by the end of the first Iranian quarter (ending June 21), the secretary of Car Importers Association said, “In my opinion, the government cannot fulfill its promise, not only by the end of the quarter, but also by the end of the Iranian year [March 20, 2024]. In the ninth and 10th governments, the Automobile Policymaking Council made decisions regarding the automobile industry and market, but at present, the Industries Ministry does not have complete control over the issue of car imports and every related organization stops the process and throws a wrench in the ministry’s plans.”
Dadfar explained that the main duty of the Industries Ministry is to register the import order and request the Institute of Standards and Industrial Research of Iran, the Traffic Police Department, the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration and the Central Bank of Iran to facilitate car imports.
“If the legal documents do not reach the Institute of Standards and Industrial Research of Iran, or the CBI does not allocate the foreign currency, nothing will happen in the field of car imports,” he said.
Noting that the Industries Ministry is not the only organization to blame regarding the slow pace of car imports, he stressed that the ministry should be able to fulfill a task completely by itself from zero to 100 percent.
“However, at present, a number of agencies are involved in car imports and each of them has their own opinion, some of which are totally subjective,” he said.
Car Import Plan Lackadaisical
Only an insignificant number of cars have been imported since the launch of the car import plan, which process has further slowed down.
An automotive expert believes challenges posed by currency depreciation and sanctions against the domestic automotive industry are the main reasons behind the snail-paced movement of new car imports.
A large portion of the promised imported cars have not arrived yet and both experts and applicants are worried that the wrong decisions of the Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade in the last four years regarding the import of passenger and heavy vehicles will also affect the latest plan.
Automotive experts suspect the import of 142 cars as a pilot for the government's avowed goal of importing 200,000 cars will be the same pattern imports will follow in the next fiscal year (March 2023-24), which implies a slow and protracted process.
Some market players believe that car companies imported this small number of cars to see how the cars are going to be supplied to the market and gauge the Industries Ministry’s approach.
“The Industries Ministry has not given any explanation about the slow pace of car imports and why they cannot fulfill their promises. But it seems that problems regarding foreign currency supply and the intensification of targeted sanctions on the car industry are among the main problems facing car imports,” said Sajjad Hemmati, an automotive expert.
"Unless the roots of the automobile industry’s problems are identified and dealt with, the Industries Ministry’s promise of importing 200,000 automobiles will not be fulfilled at least until the touted timeframe, i.e., the end of the first quarter of the fiscal 2023-24 [June 21]."
Asked to what extent the methods announced for the supply of imported cars will be effective in identifying the real consumer and eliminating brokers, Hemmati said, “Unfortunately, the car import situation is ambiguous and moving at a very slow speed. The same number of imported cars [142 units] have not been supplied to the market yet. This shows that the method [of selling cars through the Iran Mercantile Exchange] is still unclear and one cannot be sure about its effectiveness.”
