Tehran, Iran, Aug.26
Trend:
Iran annually exports equipment worth $500 billion alongside power engineering services worth $2 billion, Board member in Tehran Chamber of Commerce and CEO of Abhar Cable company Afshin Kolahi told Trend.
"In energy equipment sector, our engineers have proved in past 20 years that the country's power infrastructure needs are provided domestically by competitive products, unlike auto industry that lost the competitiveness due to customs tariffs," he said.
"The average customs tariff in energy sector is 15 percent that is a low import tariff and we have witnessed that Iranian companies have taken the control of market and moved the big foreign giants out of domestic market. Thus, Iran's power industry was not harmed during sanction situation, the power cuts was due to lack of investment and domestic mismanagement," he added.
"Our exports potentials are high. The power industry is dependent on public budget. In the region, the ISIS and oil price drop have effected countries such as Iraq, and our investment in Iraq reduced. Meanwhile, in past five years, Iran's average exports of equipment of power industry was $500 billion per year, while the annual exports of technical and power engineering services was $2 billion," he said.
"There is capacity to increase these volumes. Turkey is an example: despite having one copper mine it annually exports $2.5 billion wire and copper. Iran that owns 6 percent of world copper mines and have petrochemical, the average exports is $150 million per year during past five years that is due to false policies that focused on upper stream industries," he noted.
"The policy would harm the productive industries, the chamber has plans to reform the approach and implement justice among all industries," he indicated.
"In past 20 years, the government has allocated the subsides to limited number of upper stream industries including oil, petrochemicals, steel, aluminum and copper, and billions of dollars were invested in these industries thus creating high profit in these fields, while it should have boosted raw material production for energy, create jobs and help growth of industrial products and exports," he said referring to problems in government policies.
"The government studies indicate the problem in country's industry is the low tariffs and complexities that increased the raw material while the productive sector with value added has been weakened," he added.
"Issues such as labour law and lack of foreign investment and of availability to latest technologies have created more problems, mismanagement in private sector and downstream companies are other problems," he added. "These problems would reduce or eliminate the value added to productive sectors such as home appliances."
"In regards to power industry, companies such as Mapna build power plants. The company has 32 subsidiaries, each constructed power plant needs equipment. Power transmission needs wire and other equipment, therefore in this industry these productions would increase the value added to chain of domestic production," he said.
"The power industry has been more successful comparing to other sectors, there was not such progress in home appliances and auto part sector, hence their exports were weak," he added.