TEHRAN – The 17th meeting of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA) board of representatives was held on Sunday in the presence of the Industry, Mining, and Trade Minister Reza Fatemi Amin, the ICCIMA portal reported.

At this meeting, which was chaired by the ICCIMA Head Gholam-Hossein Shafeie, the representatives of the country’s private sector raised concerns and problems related to the industry, mining, and trade sectors and offered some solutions in order for the Industry Ministry to consider.

Speaking in the meeting, Shafeie enumerated some of the country's economic problems, and said: "The private sector expects the new government to reduce the costs that are imposed on this sector in various ways.”

"Preventing unprofessional decisions which are made without consulting experts and considering the private sector views, and facilitating production by reducing transaction costs are some of the main issues that the private sector expects to be considered in this government,” Shafeie stressed.

Govt. encourages private sector to participate in economic decision-making

In another meeting held by the ICCIMA’s Business Environment Improvement Committee, the mentioned committee encouraged the private sector to participate in the government’s economic decision-making and provide it with new theories to improve the country’s economy.

During the mentioned meeting, an ICCIMA’s proposal on the ways to engage the private sector in the country’s economic decision-making was reviewed and the suggestions provided in it were approved.

Accordingly, the implementation of the mentioned proposal, which has been prepared by the ICCIMA Research Center, was put on the agenda, and cooperation between the chambers of commerce, guilds, and cooperatives was emphasized in doing so.

The members of the ICCIMA Industry and Mining Committee also held a meeting on Saturday to discuss the improvement of the performance of the country’s industrial sector in both domestic and export markets.

Chaired by Alireza Kolahi Samadi, the head of the mentioned committee, the meeting was mainly focused on ways to supply raw materials for export-oriented production units and also setting energy carrier prices for such industrial units.

During this meeting, the attendees stressed the need for the government to provide more incentives for the country’s industrial sector and noted that the government should remove some raw material items from the list of value-added tax exemptions and allocated the resulted tax revenues for providing incentives for exporters.

“One of our programs is to finalize the list of raw materials that should be excluded from value-added tax exemptions. This is an effective and necessary step, and our goal is to persuade the government to allocate at least one-third of the resulted tax income, which we estimate to be in about $15 billion, to provide incentives to industrial units,” Kolahi Samadi said in the meeting.

EF/MA