Tehran Times - Domestic auto part manufacturers want Industry Ministry to make new policies that facilitate their activities, the secretary of Iranian Auto Part Manufacturers Association told IRNA on Saturday.

Arash Mohebi-Nejad mentioned four major problems that auto part manufacturers are facing as lack of liquidity, prices which should be modified, difficulty of supplying raw materials both from inside and outside the country, and settling credit purchases.

He said some of the problems can be removed through policies made by the Industry Ministry and through cooperation of the auto part manufacturers, for example floating prices for the parts could be a resolution.

Industry Ministry has been recently following up the policies for supporting domestic auto part manufacturers.

In mid-May, Industry Minister Reza Rahmani issued a directive on “strengthening domestic manufacturing of imported auto parts”.

Addressing two of his deputies, Farshad Moqimi, deputy for industrial affairs, and Mohammad-Baqer Ali, the board chairman of Iran’s Industrial Development and Renovation Organization (IDRO), the minister put emphasis on using the highest potential of human resources for strengthening domestic manufacturing of auto parts which are currently imported to the country.

Highlighting the orders of the Supreme Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei on supporting production in the current Iranian calendar year (began on March 21), which is named the year of “Pickup in Production” by the supreme leader, Rahmani stressed that cooperation among all car makers, auto part manufacturers, knowledge-based companies and enterprises is vital for strengthening domestic manufacturing of imported auto parts.

This movement should be all-out promoted to combat sanctions and also prevent from exit of foreign currency from the country, the minister noted.

He said the policy of domestic manufacturing of auto parts should be seriously followed up, and in this due the capable manufacturers should be seriously supported.

Given that 1.25 million vehicles are anticipated to be manufactured in the country during the current Iranian calendar year (ends on March 19, 2020), the part manufacturers will need 150 trillion rials of working capital (about $3.571 billion) for the purchase of raw materials and other required items.

As previously announced by Industry Ministry, Iranian carmakers manufactured 266,961 vehicles during the first four months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-July 22).

The ministry’s data show that car manufacturing in Iran has fallen 38.3 percent in the four-month period of this year from 432,528 cars manufactured in the same time span of the previous year.