Tehran, Iran, May 9
By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:
Iran is losing $2.2 billion value added because of smuggling each year, said Ali Fazaeli, chairman of the Iran Chamber of Guilds.
He said the amount has been calculated from the statistics.
According to the statistics, each year $22.5 billion goods are smuggled into the country, IRIB news agency reported May 9.
He went on to criticize the country's tariff system as the major factor that causes smuggling.
"As an example," he said, "we don't have any production of cell phones in Iran. But unstable tariffs on the goods, vacillating between zero and 17 percent, cause $2.2 billion smuggling of cell phones a year."
Iran's cellphone imports decreased by 25 percent to hit $230.9 during the last fiscal year, ended on March 20, as the product remains at the top of the list of goods smuggled into the country.
Fazaeli pointed out that most smuggled goods in Iran account for clothing, domestic appliances, spare parts, and cell phones.
On April 25 a group of Iranian experts in a statement expressed their concerns over growing volume of smuggled goods into the country, adding high tariffs for importing some goods encourage people to turn to smuggling.
The latest statistics suggest that over 10.328 million tons of goods were transited through 32 border crossings in Iran in a time period of 11 months between March 2015 and January 2016, indicating 10 percent drop year on year.
Although the country's transit officials say the decline in oil prices as well as Iraq's economy have caused the drop in Iran's transit figure, experts believe that shortcomings in the country's transit sector are the main reason behind the 10 percent drop in the figure.
Iran is a major transit route connecting Central Asian countries to the Persian Gulf and Europe. In the meantime Iran is considered as a transit route for carrying fuel from Iraq to the Persian Gulf states.