Iran Post Company has lined up an ambitious project for the post-sanctions period.
In an interview with the Persian-language technology and telecoms website Tech Rasa, Hossein Mehri, chief executive of the national postal service, announced a new mechanism underway for handling international product orders.
“We’re participating with the private sector to distribute products from foreign e-commerce websites. A private company has signed a deal with eBay, and Iranians will be able to buy products from it by October,” said the CEO of this state-run postal company.
“Another company has also signed a deal with Alibaba and Amazon.”
Shahram Heyshad, IPC’s director for new service developments, said that at present, a website called Yaataa.ir is collaborating with eBay.
Yaataa is in its beta version right now and will officially launch by mid-October.
Some of the products available on eBay have been selected for Yaataa’s website. Users can see the original price of items and the shipping price in dollars and rials, though there are no links to the original page listing.
“We held talks with Iran’s Customs Administration. Products ranging from 50 to 80 dollars are exempt from customs duties,” said Mehri.
He added that at present, more than 80% of the products imported into the country are duty free.
Due to the sanctions imposed on Iran’s economy, Iranians have not been able to use the services of websites like Amazon and eBay.
An American multinational corporation and e-commerce company, eBay provides consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales services via Internet.
Headquartered in San Jose, California, eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a notable success story. Today, it is a multibillion-dollar business with operations localized in over 30 countries.
An online auction and shopping website, eBay.com is used by people and businesses to buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide.
Amazon is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington.
The top Internet-based retailer in the United States is a retailer of books, movies, music and games along with electronics, toys, apparel, sports, tools, groceries and general home and garden items.
In the past, if an Iranian wanted an item not available in the country, they had to ask someone in neighboring countries to buy it for them and post it back to Iran. Some companies outside Iran seized the opportunity and made businesses off this situation.
According to Mehri, Iran Post Company has delivered over 5 million parcels worth 3.2 trillion rials ($100 million) in the past year.
Now that Iran and major world powers have signed the nuclear deal in Vienna on July 14, which has recently crossed the US Congress hurdles and is expected to lead to the lifting of sanctions in early 2016, American companies can conveniently reach out to their Iranian counterparts and likely partners.
Amazon and eBay had not responded to our request for confirmation of Iran Post Company’s announcement. However, one can safely assume that the items listed on the local site are relisted by Yattaa without any formal agreement with the American companies.
