The current Iranian calendar year has been named as the year of ‘support for Iranian products’ by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

‘Supporting Iranian products’ has been always emphasized by the officials, but there should be a clear roadmap to achieve such goal.

While attracting the customers is a main point, supporting products also requires related businesses thriving; and flourishing businesses needs establishment of direct connections between producers and consumers.

Commodity exchanges are some places that can play significant role in creating such connections and such role is more highlighted in Iran in this year of ‘support for Iranian products’.

Given the expanding process of offering and trading different kinds of commodities including industrial, petrochemical and especially agricultural products in Iran Mercantile Exchange (IME) since the past year, it can help materialize the motto of ‘supporting Iranian products’ significantly, according to Hassan Amiri, the deputy head of Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO) for supervising the exchange markets.

“IME has already played some special part in promotion of Iranian products and it will continue its role in this way”, Amiri told ISNA on April 29.

Meanwhile, as one of the main requirements of a production or industrial unit is reliable funding, capital market including IME as an organized market can provide the ground for reliable and on-time funding and also for competitive prices.

“The country’s financial system should move in a way to encourage investors to develop capital market and flourish domestic industries. Reliable funding for domestic producers can support Iranian products and make them competitive in the international markets”, according to Mohsen Fazelian, a capital market expert.

He also believes that another way through it IME can support Iranian products is offering comprehensive reports on the quality of the goods.

He says: “Of course, capital market is not charged with standardizing and grading the products, but when it clarifies the quality characteristics of the commodities, it provides some comparison factors for the consumers which can encourage them to buy domestic products.”

And according to IME Managing Director Hamed Soltaninejad, production of high-quality products and offering them by the producers on one side and encouraging demand of the consumers on the other side cannot be expected without offering required support and incentives.

He names discovery of fair prices through free supply and demand in the IME as one of the most important encouraging approaches in this due.

And as being strongly suggested by him and other capital market directors and experts, enough attraction and security should be provided for domestic investors so that they make investment in the way of ‘supporting Iranian products’.