All home appliances in the Iranian marker should henceforth carry a printed identification number, otherwise they will be deemed contraband and their producers or sellers will be subjected to anti-smuggling penalties, the head of the Headquarters to Combat Smuggling of Goods and Foreign Exchange said.
“Iran’s home appliances market has a turnover of 400 quadrillion rials [$2.23 billion]. The household market is sizable and smuggling in the field is very high and this is why the ID number scheme is being carried out first in this sector. We plan to gradually expand the scheme to include other products as well,” Ali Moayyed Khorramabadi was also quoted as saying by ILNA.
The official asked customers to demand ID numbers from sellers of home appliances to be reassured that the product they are buying is original and not a contraband.
“Using the same ID number, customers can access a guarantee system and receive after-sales services,” he added.
Moayyedi said the scheme was supposed to kick off in January, but it was postponed due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
Spokesman of the Producers of Household Appliances Guild Union Hamidreza Ghaznavi said based on the new regulation, after receiving an ID number through a website introduced by the Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade, each product will be given a random tracking code and both the ID number and tracking code are required to be printed on the product, Mizan Online reported.
Speaking on the subject earlier, Morteza Miri, the head of Home Appliances Sellers Union, said ID numbers have to be printed on domestic home appliances before leaving the factory.
Based on official figures, 75% of Iranians are customers of foreign home appliance brands and the remaining 25% use products manufactured in Iranian factories, which also require foreign spare parts for their production.
Alongside apparel, foodstuff, mobile phones and gold ingots, household appliances are among the main contraband items widely available in the Iranian market.
“The government banned the import of household appliances in 2018, but they continue to be smuggled into the country. These contraband items enter Iran from the western borders … Besides the issue of authenticity of smuggled products, since import tax has not been paid for them, they are sold at cheaper prices in the domestic market,” Secretary-General of Iran's Home Appliances Association Habibollah Ansari has been quoted as saying.
Spokesman of the Headquarters to Combat Smuggling of Goods and Foreign Exchange also told Fars News Agency that contraband home appliances worth more than $2.2 billion were smuggled into Iran in the fiscal 2018-19, adding that this robs Iranians of around 80,000 jobs.
The conclusion of Majlis Economic Commission’s probe into government policies and performance in its fight against smuggling was read aloud by Hassan Hosseini Shahroudi, the spokesperson of the commission, at the parliament’s open session on May 12.
“Despite the announcement made by the Goods and Foreign Exchange Anti-Smuggling Headquarters on the decline of smuggling in the years ending March 2017 and March 2018, the parliamentary investigating committee found different results. The headquarters had put the volume of smuggling at $12.5 billion in the year ending March 2017 and $13.1 billion in the year ending March 2018. However, according to the parliament’s report, goods and foreign currency smuggled in each of those years were valued between $21.5 billion and $25.5 billion in average,” the report read.
