TEHRAN – Iran is expected to become an exporter of some home appliance items as of the next Iranian calendar year (starts in March 2021), Hamidreza Ghaznavi, the spokesman of Home Appliances Manufacturers Union, said.

“If the currency problems are solved and steel sheets and some petrochemical products are provided for this industry, we will become an exporter of some household appliances by the next year,” Ghaznavi said.

According to the official, until recently and before the exit of two major South Korean companies (LG and Samsung) from Iran’s market, over 60 percent of the market was held by these companies while nearly 15 percent belonged to luxury brands and only about 25 percent of people used domestic products.

“After the two companies withdrew from the Iranian market under the U.S. sanctions, many of the consumers of their products were inclined toward domestic products,” he said.

So domestic companies must be supported to be able to meet the growing demand and even become exporters of such products, he added.

In recent years, the Iranian government has been following a new strategy for supporting domestic production to neutralize the impacts of the U.S. sanctions while reducing the reliance of the economy on oil revenues.

The home appliances sector has not been an exemption and like many other areas, the production of home appliances has witnessed a significant rise in the past two years so that in the previous calendar year 1398 (ended on March 19) this industry’s production capacity increased by 10 percent compared to the preceding year.

In late June, Acting Industry, Mining, and Trade Minister Hossein Modares Khiabani said the country’s home appliance manufacturers currently can produce 20 million units every year.

According to Khiabani, the knowledge for manufacturing up to 70 percent of the home appliances in Iran has been indigenized by local companies.

Based on Industry Ministry data, in the previous year, 1,168,700 refrigerators and freezers were produced in the country, an increase of 7.8 percent compared to the preceding year 1397 (ended on March 20, 2019), while domestic companies produced 732,200 washing machines, to register a 32-percent increase year on year.

Also, the production of water air conditioners increased by 6.3 percent to 904,900 units during the said period.

EF/MA