Government’s Current Attitude: Not Progressive

KhodroCar – It is six months past the vehicle import registration website shut down. Last reason given by the authorities to justify such action was to protect the domestic automotive market and industry. Mojtaba Khosrotaj, CEO of Trade Promotion Organization of Iran once said specifically that Iran’s car market is not for free and is not going to be hand over to foreign products so easy and that is to protect and improve the domestic car industry. Now with great rise in vehicle import tariffs, it seems the market is going to be taken over by domestic automotive products and the Chinese.

Taking a glimpse at the limitations of the 1990’s, it is easy to deduce that the domestic car makers have been faced with limitations alike in the past as they are now facing today. They have utterly proven that they are so competent in loosing golden opportunities, not finding a true path to success and progress even when the market is in their possession. That is because the progress is achieved in a competitive market and not in a possessive one.

"Limitations almost worked for almost a decade back in the 90’s. Some goals were achieved such as rise in production figures, improvement of the infrastructures, launching new models and the expansion of after sales services net. Yet everything took an unpleasant turn when the government changed and all the achievements were gone with the wind.” Said Farbod Zaveh, an expert in the field of automotive industry.

Zaveh said in description of the incompetency of those plans in their upcoming years: isolating industries for long time anywhere in the world will lead them to lose motive in exportation and with that gone, goes the motive to keep on the quality and innovation. When the government keeps supporting car makers even with huge incompetency in car makers’ motive, the result is going to be the quick qualitative fall in any fields.

Zave added about the recent changes done in the field of vehicle import and rise in tariffs: All the changes and the talks are nothing new to us. It is more than forty years we here the same thing. The nature of the economy of Iran’s economy is governmental and it does not carry any different result that this. When a method did not pay off properly in the past, there is no logic to mimic it today, expecting different out puts that are not going to happen. If the government keep on the current attitude toward the automotive industry, we shall see no progress as we did not so far.

Needless to say, previous and now current limitations are in the favor of domestic car makers because they turn the market into a possessive market. Worldwide car making experience has shown that the progress is an outcome of a competitive market and not a possessive one.