TEHRAN – Head of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) has emphasized the positive effect of incentive packages for encouraging exporters to return their export revenues into the country’s economic cycle, TPO portal reported.

In a meeting of the Supreme Council for the Development of Non-Oil Exports’ Expert Committee, various ways and solutions for increasing the commitment of the exporters in returning the foreign revenue earned from their non-oil exports into the country’s forex management system (known as NIMA) were explored among which was considering incentive packages.

Speaking in the meeting, Hamid Zadboum noted that the Industry, Mining, and Trade Ministry is obliged to follow up on the process of re-injection of foreign currency incomes into the NIMA system and to implement the necessary mechanisms like using incentive tools.

In this regard, Zadboum called on various government and private sector bodies to present their suggestions on ways to accelerate the return of the foreign currency earned from exports, so that appropriate actions could be taken after reviewing the solutions and implementing the decisions.

"Investigating the exporters who do not return the export currency to the country's economic cycle within the specified deadline is one of the main programs that the Trade Promotion Organization is pursuing," he said.

He emphasized the need for considering incentive packages by TPO and the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) to motivate exporters and to accelerate the return of export currency, and said: “More than 1300 exporters with an average $8 billion worth of exports, returned 100 percent of their export revenues in [the Iranian calendar] year 1397 (ended in March 2019), so implementing incentive programs will increase the number of such committed exporters.”

In recent months, as the value of Iranian rial has decreased significantly against the U.S. dollar, the CBI has been claiming that the private sector is not fulfilling its commitments regarding the return of foreign currency earnings into the country’s economy.

On the other hand, representatives of the private sector have criticized CBI’s strict policies on the return of the export revenues into the Integrated Forex Management System.

Last week, in an online meeting of the heads of the country’s chambers of commerce, the attendees voiced concern over the central bank's performance and its pressures on the private sector to return export revenues to the country's economic cycle.

EF/MA