A specialized judicial court has opened in Tehran to exclusively deal with cases related to business disputes.
This came following demands from representatives of Iran's private sector at the Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA) and its local branches and with the go-ahead of Ebrahim Raeisi, the head of Iran’s Judiciary.
“This specialized court is dedicated to trade and commercial cases to be resolved expeditiously and efficiently by judges who have a thorough knowledge and understanding of commercial regulations and legal disputes led by Hojjatoleslam Amir Reza Dehqaninia,” Yahya Jafari, the director general of Revolutionary and Public courts in Tehran Province, said.
During the inauguration ceremony of the court, ICCIMA President Gholam Hossein Shafei hailed the move and said: "The business disputes specialized court would help remove hurdles in the way of business activities in Iran."
Experts believe that the specialized judicial center would improve Iran’s ease of doing business ranking by 20 places.
Iran’s ease of doing business ranking improved by one place to stand at 127th among 190 economies in the World Bank's latest Ease of Doing Business Report.
The 2020 report shows the country's distance to frontier score saw a decline of 0.1 percentage point, compared to last year’s 58.6, to reach 58.5 in the new report.
The World Bank report measures the efficiency of the judicial system in resolving a commercial dispute and the quality of judicial processes.
Iran ranks 90th with a score of 58.2, which indicates no change over last year. Contract enforcements in Iran take 505 days, costing 19.3% of the claim’s value. The economy scores five (out of 18) on the quality of judicial processes index.