Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 6
Trend:
The value of cell phones’ legal import into Iran has registered an increase by 92.92 percent year-on-year in the first five months of the current fiscal year (March 20- Aug. 22).
Iran imported $239.8 million worth of cell phones in the 5-month period, the country’s customs administration said.
The customs administration did not publish the number of the imported cell phones in the period, however the former statistics says that Iran’s legal cell phone imports amounted to 1.357 million devices, worth $228 million in the first five months of the current fiscal year, 146.6 percent more compared to the same month of the preceding year in terms of value.
Iran imported 690,764 cell phones, worth $92.5 million in the first four months of the last fiscal year.
Iran’s cell phone import in the fifth calendar month amounted to $11.8 million. Given the fact that the average value of the imported cell phones was $47.96 million per month this fiscal year, Iran’s cell phone imports in the last calendar month were 75 percent less than the monthly value.
Iran’s cell phone imports hiked after the Iranian administration implemented a plan to prevent smuggling the devices into the country.
Under the plan, cell phone users in the country need to register their devices with the country’s telecommunications user database.
Iran imported 3.224 million cell phones, worth $518.27 million during the last fiscal year, ended March 20.
The cell phone imports registered a rise by 108.6 percent during the 12-month period.
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.
Earlier in 2006, there was only 4 percent import tariff for imported smartphones, however, a year later the government put 60 percent import tariff on smartphones which disrupted the market and led to huge rise of illegal smartphone imports into the country.
The government later gradually decreased the tariff. Currently, there are various smartphone import taxes and tariffs which amount to 23 percent of a smartphone’s original price.