Baku, Azerbaijan, July 21
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran's Sadra Shipbuilding Company lost over $140 million the past year, the ISNA news agency reported on July 21.
Sadra, which was a subsidiary Iran's Khatam-ol Anbya Construction Headquarters affiliated with the Islamic Republic of Iran Guard Corps (IRGC), was transferred last August to the private sector.
The company has been grappling with many problems in recent years, to the extent that it fired 585 people between March 2011 and March 2014.
The company's accumulated debt amounted to $1.1 billion in the year 1392 (March 2013-March 2014).
Iranian industry minister Mohammad Reza Ne'matzadeh has criticized the privatization of Sadra, saying that the company has been transferred to an ineligible contractor.
Sadra was founded in 1968 as a small ship repair yard in Bushehr. Since then, Sadra has established itself as the leading shipbuilding and ship-repairing company in Iran.