During the first nine months of the current year (March 21-December 21), 12 trillion rials (over $342 million at market exchange rate) worth of contraband imported goods were seized, which indicates a 24 percent rise compared to the same period last year, Habibollah Haghoghi, the head of Goods and Foreign Exchange Anti-Smuggling Headquarters, said on Sunday.
“During the first nine months of the current year, 215 cases of the contraband goods worth 5 billion rials, 1,569 cases worth above one billion rials, and 64,000 cases worth less than one billion rials were seized,” he added.
The official vowed that the government is set to combat the ever-growing rate of smuggling in the country and noted that the plans are underway to make the monetary system transparent, organize domestic production, employ various methods to control smuggling, and fix the prices of domestic products.
Import statistics released by Iran’s Customs Organization for the first seven months of the current Iranian year (March 21–October 22) indicate that the value of imports increased by 72.24 percent year-on-year. The president of Iran Trade Promotion Organization (ITPO) says the top ten imported goods were basic and intermediate commodities.
The Goods and Foreign Exchange Anti-Smuggling Headquarters has announced that smuggled goods, which mainly comprised consumer goods, accounted for 34 percent of the total imports in the seven-month period.
Smuggling is considered as a barrier to production. Relevant bodies have revealed that 90 percent of imported cosmetics and hygienic products are smuggled into the country.
Meanwhile, parliament speaker Ali Larijani, believes that the private sector can be a new member of the Goods and Foreign Exchange Anti-Smuggling Headquarters. “The country’s current policy is to support production and implement the resistance economy policy,” he said in a meeting with the provincial economic activists in industrial, mining, trade and agricultural field in Orumiyeh on Saturday.
The parliament speaker described smuggling as one of the major problems facing the Iranian economy, which encompasses the illegal trade of narcotics, goods, and hard currency.
