...

Iran's medical device importers challenged by China’s Bank of Kunlun

Business Materials 13 July 2019 15:40 (UTC +04:00)

Tehran, Iran, July 13

Trend:

The Iranian medical device importers are not able to transfer money to their suppliers through China's Bank of Kunlun while the bank requires 15 percent fee to release the money, said the Head of Merchants Association of Medical Equipment.

"The Central Bank of Iran has introduced Bank of Kunlun to us but the bank refuses to release our money, in past two months only 10 merchants have been able to transfer money and according to latest updates the Chinese bank charges 15 percent fee to release the money," said Abolfath Sanei, Trend reports citing ILNA.

"The foreign exchange offices charge 4 to 5 percent fee for money transfer while the Central Bank of Iran only provide six percent of official foreign currency to importers and the rest of costs will be added to the final price tag," he noted.

"Any change in price depend on function of the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, if we can only use financial sources inside Europe the prices will reduce a little but if we transfer sources from other countries to INSTEX the prices will not change due to transferring fees," he indicated.

"The medical equipment in operation rooms and the medical devices that needs to be installed inside patient body should be produced in the US or Europe other general medical goods are imported from China and India, although there have been problem in providing general items while the process of money transfer and import is slow and long," he added.

"There is problem over pricing medical items and equipment between importers and Ministry of Health and we have filed a complaint. Unfortunately the Ministry of Health does not set the price based on the real costs, for example the money transfer fee are not included in the price," he noted.

“From the start of Iranian year(started on March 21 ,2019) we are allowed to increase the prices by 8 percent while the CBI does not provide official foreign currency we are forced to gather foreign currency from free market the problems have caused sacristy of medical items in the market," he said.

Tags:
Latest

Latest