Iran devises import regulations for foreign cars

Tehran, Jan 20, IRNA – Syndicate of Iranian Automobile Importers (SIAI) has devised a set of rules of import regulations aimed at ensuring the high quality of imports. 'This set of regulations in not aimed at deleting the unofficial car importers and is merely aimed at ensuring the genuinity of the imported cars,' Head of the SIAI Farhad Ehteshamzadeh said. 'There are cases that manipulated automobiles, such as those damaged in accidents, mended, or with non-standard options and unmatched with the manufacturers' users manuals are imported and this set of rules and regulations aimed to avoid such problems,' he said. He said that the authorized car importers are usually the sole agents of foreign brand cars and importing a new car has certain prerequisites such as obtaining the Department of Environment (DOE) license. Ehteshamzadeh added that during the first ten months of the current Iranian year (1393 – began on March 21, 2014) 70% of the imported cars to Iran were by the non-agent importers. Out of the existing 24 sole agents of foreign cars that had a 30% share of the import cars, and 20 of them had a 90% share of the Iranian automobile imports, he added. He said that the government is demanding transparency to make sure that the government's rights are not breached and that the customers' interests are not ignored by the new set of rules and regulations.