Iran’s Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade announced on Monday it has detailed plans for car imports.
The ministry said in a statement that it hopes that the arrival of an expedient number of cars in the second half of this calendar year will leave a favorable impact on the Iranian car market.
Since the beginning of the new government under President Ebrahim Raisi in August 2021, one of the objectives of the ministry was to control the car market and resolve people's dissatisfaction with issues related to the market disturbances, the statement read.
For this purpose, one of the effective tools to narrow the gap between supply and demand has been the import of cars with the priority of providing cars to ordinary people, the statement added without providing any more details on the ministry’s plan for car imports.
Iranian Minister of Industry, Mine, and Trade Reza Fatemi Amin said in Mid-March that there is an annual demand for 1.5 million cars in Iran while the domestic automakers supply only 1 million cars per annum.
The minister noted that “demand is more than supply and the domestic carmakers have not been able to fill this gap. Therefore, we need to import”.
A recent order by President Ebrahim Raisi calls for an increase in domestic output of cars by 50% by the end of the current Iranian year (March 20, 2023).