Iran sees considerable surge in import of cellphone devices

Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 24

By Khalid Kazimov – Trend:

The value of imports of cellphone devices into Iran over the current year has increased by 87.12 percent, an official with the country's central task force to combat the smuggling of commodities and currency said.

Mohammadreza Dehqaninia has said that Iran imported worth of $276 million of cellphone devices over the first nine months of the current fiscal year (starting March 20), local media outlets reported.

This is while the value of the imports of cellphone devices in the country in the same time of last year stood at $147.5 million.

He further added that worth of $625 million of cellphones were smuggled into the country in the fiscal 2016/17.

Last October, Iran launched a long-awaited national scheme to curb the huge and growing market for smuggled cellphones.

Under the scheme, cellphone users in the country have been required to register their devices with the country’s telecommunications user database.

The officials earlier announced that the annual demand for phone devices in the Iranian market is reportedly about 14 million devices and about 90 percent of this amount is smuggled into Iran.