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Harsh reality: Iran's private sector pushed back, country suffers from access to meds

Business Materials 14 December 2018 09:50 (UTC +04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.14

Trend:

Despite the US exception for Iran's food and drug import, the people in Iran have difficulty accessing medicine, the Head of Import Assembly Alireza Managhebi told Trend.

"Apparently, the officials say there is no problem for medicine imports but in reality, the people's accessibility to medicine is limited," he said.

"The importers in the private sector have faced problems to import medicine," he said.

With regards to food, Managhebi said that food is being produced in the country and direct importing food items have been banned, however the import of some raw materials is free that would be imported according the specific regulations.

These aren't the only problems that Iran is facing.

"The only available statistics about country's commodity imports situation, is the names of people who received a huge amount of money in official foreign currency rate which have been issued by Central Bank, but the reason is not clear why they received that currency,” Managhebi said.

"In the past, the private sector would have created balance in the market, but now nobody knows what is happening,” he said.

“We don't know how much essential goods we have, or which commodities are scarce or even oversupplied," he said.

"The reason is mismanagement,” he said.

"Although the market was in equilibrium by the end of last Iranian year [ended in March 2017] and no one was overly allowed to import, but something created an unsafe environment. At that time the sanctions still not implemented, but the government intervention has been growing,” he said.

"Iran’s economy has become more political and suffer from the lack of transparency," added Managhebi.

"There is no transparent information about the volume of imports. The importers and economic companies have downsized their staff due to debts," he said referring to import of essential goods.

"Today, the private sector is on the verge of danger, despite propaganda", he added.

According to Managhebi, Iran's customs are overloaded with imported goods.

"The goods have been paid for, so the seized production should be released," he said.

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