TEHRAN, 1 September 2003 — Iran has again banned imports of foreign-made cars despite lifting a prohibition just weeks ago, the local press reported a minister as saying yesterday.
“Until we become confident that the domestic conditions for car imports are ready, we will not allow foreign car imports,” Iranian Commerce Minister Ali Shariatmadari was quoted as saying. “There are more than 15,000 workshops and factories engaged in car-part manufacturing. Their preservation is the government’s duty, so we will not jeopardize their existence by importing foreign-made cars,” he added.
“We wanted to import foreign-made cars in order to rid the streets of polluting cars, but not at the expense of destroying our domestic car manufacturing industry,” Shariatmadari said.
As early as three days ago, a senior official in the Commerce Ministry named five brands of foreign cars ready to export to Iran. Mitsubishi, Toyota, BMW, Hyundai and Lada were given the green light to ship 35 different models to Iran, of which 33 were sedans and the rest minibuses, Hossein Faraji, trade chief at the Ministry of Commerce told newspapers.
It would have been the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution that Iran sanctioned car imports, albeit under hefty duty, in order to ease pressure on outdated domestic producers. Currently, all Iranian cars are made under license from foreign companies.
