Unknown Fate of Vehicles’ Scrappage Scheme in Iran

KhodroCar – Many automotive industry experts are worried about the closure of car import registration website and its effect on worn-out vehicles market. It is said that Iran has two million worn-out vehicles but some vehicle scrappage centers are on the brink of bankruptcy.

Mostafa Joudi, Chairman of the Board of Iran’s Recycling and Scrappage Guild, told Khodrocar regarding the issue: "Renovation of worn-out vehicles has a direct relationship with the clean air, traffic, reducing the accidents, creating capacity and sales market for domestic and foreign cars. 

He said: "Our guild has two suggestions to overcome this situation. The first one is that the government, the parliament or the department of environment should take the responsibility of retiring worn-out vehicles. The second one is that the government should allocate special budgets for retiring old cars and also low interest and long-term loans for these car owners.”

Chairman of the Board of Iran’s Recycling and Scrappage Guild added: "Since many years ago, 2 million vehicles are waiting to be scrappaged but that didn’t happen till this day and their number is increasing this year.”

Joudi emphasized: "Last year, 75 thousand vehicles have been imported to Iran and on the other hand 170000 cars retired which helped numbering the new imported cars.”

He added: "Volume of car numbering has been increased since two months ago and it is logical that more cars should be scrapped too, but that’s not what happened. Closure of car import registration website affected the worn-out vehicles’ market. Now, it's better for the government not to restrict the import of cars, because the output of worn-out vehicles will be reduced.”

Joudi told KhodroCar about age average of worn-out vehicles: "The age average of worn-out cars are 20 years, for pickups and Peikan are 15 and taxies are 10 years. First of all, the unknown fate of those two million should be determined.”

According to an "Act” approved in the year 2009, the domestic carmakers must retire worn-out vehicles equivalent to 30% of new products but until now, none of domestic carmakers performed it.

He mentioned: "For the past two months, the law has been reduced to cars that has fuel consumption between 8 and 8 and a half liters per 100 kilometers, which contained 125 thousand cars but it was canceled immediately.”

According to him, in 1395, 75 thousand foreign cars were imported and 170 thousand imported vehicles were retired. Meanwhile, Iran’s domestic cars makers produced more than 1 million and 200 thousand vehicles and on the other hand none of worn-out domestic products scrappaged.

Joudi continued: "Today, we have 200 active scrappage centers in the country with the investment of private sector. These centers have the capacity of scrapping 1 million and 600 thousand vehicles per year but most of them are on the brink of bankruptcy.”

KhodroCar reporter: Negar MirKarimi

KhodroCar translator: Maziyar Jafarieh