TEHRAN- Iran has manufactured 6.9 million sets of home appliances during the 9.5-month period started from March 20, 2020 (beginning of the current Iranian calendar year), according to an official with the Ministry of Industry, Mining and Trade.

Stating that the goal of this ministry for this year is to manufacture 12 million sets of home appliances, Keyvan Gardan, the director for the electrical and metals industries and home appliances office of the ministry, said, "Considering the upward trend in the production of home appliances in the country, more than 80 percent of this goal has been achieved so far."

The secretary of the Association of Industries of Household Appliances of Iran has recently said that domestic production of equipment and parts used in the home appliance industry has saved Iran $220 million.

Currently, Iranian producers have indigenized the knowledge for manufacturing 70-75 percent of the country’s home appliance needs, Abbas Hashemi said in a press conference in late December.

According to Hashemi, the Association of Industries of Household Appliances of Iran has established a parts manufacturing department, the purpose of which is to promote the position of component makers in the association to deepen domestic manufacturing of the required parts and equipment in this industry while providing a platform for home appliance manufacturers and component makers to stay connected.

The official noted that the country has managed to export up to $250 million of home appliances in the previous years and currently, the production and assembly lines for Iranian home appliances have been set up in some of the countries in the region and Iran is exporting its products to the target markets by sending Completely Knocked Down (CKD) kits to the mentioned production lines.

Iran has various comparative advantages in this industry in terms of supplying raw materials such as steel sheets, petrochemicals, copper and brass sections, the abundance and low costs of energy and workforce in addition to the strategic position of the country, compared to other countries in the region, he said.

“So, the development of exports to countries in the region and to the neighboring countries is possible even despite the strong regional competitors,” Hashemi added.

In recent years, the Iranian government has been following a new strategy for supporting domestic production to neutralize the impacts of the U.S. sanctions while reducing the reliance of the economy on oil revenues.

The home appliances sector has not been an exemption and like many other areas, the production of home appliances has witnessed a significant rise in the past two years so that in the previous calendar year 1398 (ended on March 19, 2020) this industry’s production capacity increased by 10 percent compared to the preceding year.

Two weeks ago, the spokesman of the Association of Industries of Household Appliances of Iran said with foreign companies leaving the country’s home appliance market the production of domestic companies has increased and the unemployment rate in this sector has significantly declined.

While it was expected that the home appliance industry, like some other industries, would suffer from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the U.S. sanctions, the inauguration of several new projects in this industry showed that the industry is expanding strongly and moving forward, Hamidreza Qaznavi said on December 28.

MA/MA