TEHRAN – The ninth meeting of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (TCCIMA)’s Industry and Mining Committee was held on Wednesday to discuss the Industry, Mining, and Trade Ministry’s new directive for managing the market of petrochemical products.

The meeting was attended by senior officials including Mohsen Safdari, head of the Industry Ministry’s Chemical and Polymer Industries Office, and the representatives of some of Tehran Province’s major petrochemical companies, the TCCIMA portal reported.

During the gathering, the attendees criticized the Industry Ministry’s approach in releasing the new directive and noted that the details of this directive had not been systematically communicated to companies and businessmen active in this field.

Speaking at the meeting, Morteza Nik-Seresht, the secretary of the Association of Plastic Industries noted that the Industry Ministry has not released any information about the new directive, and people active in this industry have been kept in the dark.

Nik-Seresht further mentioned some of the problems of the petrochemical industry’s downstream sector including the unwillingness of production units to buy raw materials from Iran Merchandise Exchanges (IME), lack of proper pricing of polymer products based on Southeast Asian markets, additional costs, having old production lines and not importing machinery.

Further in the meeting, Safdari noted that the Industry Ministry’s new directive has been discussed twice at the ministry’s market regulation working group and the opinions of the private sector have been received and applied in preparing the directive.

He said the directive has not yet been implemented and private sector representatives can submit their opinions about the directive to be considered.

The petrochemical industry plays a crucial role in Iran’s non-oil economy, as the export of such products is the second-largest source of revenue for the country after crude oil. Petrochemical exports already constitute nearly 33 percent of the country’s non-oil exports.

EF/MA