Azerbaijan, Baku, Sep.3/ Trend R.Zamanov
Some 4000-5000 CKD's of the Megan car worth 400 billion rials, which is some $12.5 million based on the rate of USD on the free market, is currently stuck in Turkey, the secretary of The Association of Iranian Car Manufacturers said on Tuesday.
"Iran's Pars Khodro Company has transferred the mentioned amount to a foreign bank, but unfortunately the bank has failed to transfer the money to the Renault company due to sanctions against Iran," the ISNA News Agency quoted Nematbakhsh as saying.
"The CKDs are ready to be transferred to Iran but the money transfer issue is a real problem," he said.
"The money has been blocked in the foreign bank for the past few months and the bank is not going to pay any interest to Pars Khodro," Nematbakhsh said, adding that the Iranian company has to pay fines to its costumers due to delays in delivering their cars.
Iran produced 989,110 cars in 2012 which made the country Asia's eighth largest car manufacturer. The country also stood at 18th in the world's list of car manufacturers, the ISNA News Agency reported.
China, Japan, South Korea, India, Thailand, Turkey and Indonesia were Asia's seven largest car manufacturers.
Iran's automobile output faced a 40 per cent decrease in 2012. The country was Asia's fifth largest car manufacturer in 2011 with a total output of 1,648,505.
Increasing prices of raw materials and foreign currencies are the main problems that the car manufacturers are faced with.
The world's total car production stood at 84,141,209 cars in 2012, which is 5.3 per cent more than the preceding year.