Savings held by citizens amount to around 6.5 trillion ($200 million) and funnel this sum to the stock market can help boost the manufacturing sector, says the vice president of the Iranian Chamber of Commerce Industries and Mines. The ICCIM has suggested two solutions for achieving this in the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan.
It is yet unclear how the ICCIM has come up with the 6.5 trillion figure. “The Fifth Five-Year Development Plan (ending March 2016) has overlooked the development of the equity market with no policy to get people to participate in the stock market,” Sohrab Sharafi told IRNA.
To help draw in people’s savings, the ICCIM suggests that a new market be developed, as people have lost confidence in the mainstream stock market.
In Sharafi’s viewpoint, people lost confidence in the market as newly-formed companies were allowed to issue stocks in the equity market. “People lost faith in equities as these firms had not yet reached profitability or showed low profits.”
Another suggestion by the ICCIM is boosting the lending power of specialized commercial banks such as Tejarat Bank, with a specialty in trade, or Keshavarzi Bank, working mainly on farming and agriculture. Bolstering these banks will help boost manufacturing and consequently, trade, the ICCIM says.
