Nearly 1,300 knowledge-based businesses in the country are exempted from tax payment which is due in the last week of June, according to Dr. Sorena Sattari, vice-president for science and technology.
“All knowledge-based businesses are legally exempted from paying tax and customs duty on imported equipment. Up to now, 50 companies have taken advantage of this opportunity,” he said during a consultative conference with elites, industrialists, and officials of North Khorasan Province, IRNA reported.
According to Behzad Soltani, head of the Innovation and Prosperity Fund (IPF), as many as 1,322 knowledge-based businesses have been registered in Iran so far.
Earlier last month, parliament (Majlis) decided to allocate $300 million from the National Development Fund of Iran (NDFI) to the IPF which supports private knowledge-based companies.
IPF pays loans amounting to less than three billion rials ($89,900) with 14 percent interest rate to firms that qualify.
“The loans will be given within two months of submitting the application; the period will be shortened in the future,” Sattari added.
He stressed the necessity of supporting the private sector in establishing knowledge-based firms to turn promising ideas into successful business ventures as “investing in government research will yield no positive results in solving people’s problems; it never has during the past 100 years.”
Sattari announced that a trade system has been established to guide people in their path of turning their ideas into enterprises.
Idea Bourse (idea market at http://www.gamidea.ir) is a databank that facilitates exchange of innovative ideas and projects between creators and investors to launch new enterprises.
It was founded in March 2013 in cooperation with the knowledge-based Pishgaman Cooperative Group (a center to promote and sell innovative ideas) and Yazd Science and Technology Park.
To ensure that the inventions will be invested in and purchased, 50 of them have been offered for sale in the Idea Bourse so far.
