TEHRAN - The Secretary General of Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (TCCIMA) Bahman Eshghi said that the plan for issuing and extending commercial ID cards via the new comprehensive commerce system should have been first implemented in a trial basis for one province and then generalized, TCCIMA portal reported.

Noting that over the past 49 days only one ID card has been issued in the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Eshghi said: “The system should have first started operating on a trial basis in a small province to identify its problems.”

To keep track of the activities of the major enterprises and companies in foreign trade, the government has assigned special commercial ID cards to the mentioned companies and traders by which they will be able to clear their imported goods or export their products.

The process of issuing and extending of the mentioned cards was previously carried out through a system which was supervised by the country’s chambers of commerce, but recently the government decided to put the Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) in charge of the mentioned task and carry out the said processes through the new comprehensive system of commerce under the supervision of the Ministry of Industry, Mining, and Trade.

However, some technical problems with the new system in issuing and extending the businessmen ID cards created serious disruptions in the activities of the traders so that the TCCIMA had to intervene and write a letter to the Industry Ministry to focus their attention to the problem.

Following the mentioned complains, the Industry Ministry decided to once again allow the previous system to resume operation and provide service to the traders along with the new system for at least two months until the technical problems of the new system are resolved.

The Vice Chairman of TCCIMA’s Trade Committee Abbas Argon, however recently told the Tehran Times that, despite the Industry Ministry’s agreement with the chambers of commerce, it has not been possible for the two systems to work in parallel, and this solution has also faced some problems.

The official said on September 20, that the two sides were still negotiating to resolve the issues and hopefully the technical issues will be eliminated as soon as possible.

EF/MA