Improving the business environment has now turned into the most urgent demand of the private sector especially in the absence of production subsidies, say economic experts, who believe that the improvement can extricate domestic production out of recession and help atttract foreign investment.
“The private sector no more seeks subsidies from the government,” said secretary of the House of Industry, Mine and Trade Mohammad-Reza Mortazavi, who added that the sector’s only demand is the business environment improvement bill to be implemented immediately, which in turn, would help spur production.
Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines, and Agriculture (ICCIMA) in cooperation with the parliament prepared a bill on ‘continuous improvement of business environment’, which was approved in February 2012.
Although the former government did not seem to have the intention to formulate related regulations and decrees for executing the bill, improving the business environment has been a key motto of the Rouhani administration since it took office in August 2013. However, three years on since the bill was passed, related decrees and regulations are yet to be devised.
The Rouhani administration has indeed taken positive measures with regard to improving the business environment, including establishing the so-called Public-Private Dialogue Council based on article 11 of the bill. “However, this is not enough,” head of industry and mine commission of the parliament Reza Rahmani told the Persian daily Forsat Emrooz.
A report released by the Parliament Research Center last August states that 66 percent of the bill is yet to be implemented. According to the report, the bill contains 47 regulations and decrees, of which 31 decrees had not been implemented by the time the report was released.
Regulations related to loans to industries, industrial tax, insurance exemption and other measures in support of the industrial sector should be taken into consideration, said Ali Naghib, deputy head of the Business Environment Commission.
