TEHRAN – Iranian Industry, Mining, and Trade Minister Alireza Razm-Hosseini said on Monday that his ministry is going to take necessary measures to accelerate the clearance of goods at customs to help regulate domestic markets.

"We will follow up on the necessary approvals and directives to reduce the deposit of goods at customs and to accelerate the clearance processes," Razm-Hosseini said on the sidelines of a market regulation headquarters’ meeting.

Referring to the customs report on the clearance of 16 million tons of basic goods, the official said: “facilitating the clearance of stored goods is one of the priorities of the Industry Ministry and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, and with the approval of the government's economic headquarters, we have started to facilitate the clearance of goods at the country's ports.”

According to the official, there are four million tons of goods stored in the country’s ports that are currently undergoing clearance processes.

Clearance of the mentioned goods will help supply the raw materials required by the production sector and will also affect the supply of basic goods in domestic markets, he said.

Earlier on Sunday, the spokesman of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA) announced that over 17.46 million tons of commodities worth $8.763 billion have been imported to the country during the first nine months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20-December 20, 2020).

More than 2,136,175 tons of basic goods were cleared from the country’s customs during the ninth Iranian calendar months of Azar (November 21- December 20, 2020), about 450,000 tons more than the previous month, Roholloha Latifi said.

Back in May 2020, the head of Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization (PMO) Mohammad Rastad said that the coronavirus outbreak has negatively affected the loading and unloading of goods in the country’s ports.

“The international trade has been [negatively] affected by the coronavirus outbreak and we have been witnessing a significant drop in maritime transportation worldwide, Rastad said.

EF/MA