TEHRAN – The 19th meeting of the board of representatives of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (TCCIMA) was held on Tuesday with the new Industry, Mining and Trade Minister in attendance.

In this meeting, the representatives of the Tehran private sector shared the problems that producers and business owners are facing with Seyyed Mohammad Atabek and called on the minister to think of ways to solve such challenges.

The members of the TCCIMA board of representatives also put forward proposals and solutions that can solve these problems and announced the readiness of the Tehran Chamber to cooperate with the Industry Ministry in this regard.

During the meeting, TCCIMA Head Mahmoud Najafi-Arab presented a report on the country's production and economic indicators and said: "Statistics indicate that the country's economy is not in a very good condition and this is in the context that the 14th government has just started its work and still has not been fully established and most of the deputies and general managers have not been selected.”

Ali Naqeeb, a member of the TCCIMA board, also mentioned the unfavorable situation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and, referring to the findings of the National Business Monitoring Plan, said: “This report shows that the state of the industry sector has worsened in the first quarter of this year compared to the indicators in the past year.”

“The country's national business environment index was recorded to be 6.04 this spring, while this figure was estimated to be 5.9 in the autumn of the previous year,” he explained.

He stated that the factories with more than 200 personnel are also operating at 50 percent capacity, adding: “Operating at 50 percent capacity means that the production cost of the products of these units is high and they cannot carry out renovations.”

EF/MA