Iran Khodro plans to double its exports to 600,000 cars by 2016.

Iran’s largest vehicle manufacturer, Iran Khodro, continues to expand its regional and global reach by opening a plant in Syria in April and readying a new plant in Turkey for 2009.
As the largest automaker in the Middle-East, Central Asia and North Africa, Iran Khodro is also ramping up exports as it builds a global presence outside Iran which is one of the biggest auto markets in the Middle East.
According to Fars News Agency, the company builds more than half a million vehicles a year, and officials have said they want to boost annual production to more than a million vehicles and hike exports to more than 600,000 by 2016.
The Syrian plant has a modest annual capacity of 5,000 units. The Turkey plant will supply Russia and central Europe. IKCO in the past two years has also begun kit assemblies in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Venezuela and Argentina, with plans to add assembly in Egypt, Vietnam and China in the next year or two.
The vehicle of choice for most of these local assembly operations is the ’Samand’, a compact sedan based heavily on the Peugeot 405 platform and with a price starting at about $9,000. ’Samand’ is the Persian name for a local breed of horse. Market observers believe that Samand, which is now registered as a trade name at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), could challenge future Chinese and Indian imports.
Iran-Khodro group, the manufacturer and owner of Samand, is the first Iranian company whose product is registered at the WIPO. The state will ensure against the fraudulent use of the name, industrial design and copying of the product manufactured by the company worldwide.
Many other world countries, including Turkey, Bangladesh and Pakistan are considered as established importers of petrol and gas-powered Samand models with left and right-hand steering-wheels.
Marketing researches have shown that given the financial capability of European and South Asian markets and the competitive advantage that Iran enjoys, Iran-Khodro can gain a foothold in many world markets in a relatively short period.
The company has other automobile production ventures with foreign countries and companies in a bid to market share for increased exports to regional markets. Croatian Ambassador to Tehran said last year that the people of East Europe are waiting for the Iranian-made passenger car ’Samand’.
She also said that after the launch of operation of Samand assembly line in Azerbaijan and Belarus, Iran Khodro now has better chances for access to the CIS and East European markets.
Iran started export of the latest model of Samand to 32 countries in autumn 2007. These countries are among customers of Iran Khodro, which have imported Samand LX and GLX before. The company has planned to manufacture 8,000 Samand Suren till May, of which 1,200 will be exported.
Samand Suren, Iran’s first passenger car to achieve Euro III emission standard, rolled off the assembly line several months ago. Aside from reducing exhaust gas pollutants, fuel consumption of the sedan has also been cut, and as a result of the modifications made to the new models of Samand, particularly its Engine Management System (EMS), the engine performance has been significantly enhanced. Better drive ability, knock reduction and improvement in the engine’s power output are cited as other changes made to the earlier model, according to the company officials.

China and Russia will not be part of a proposed pipeline project to transfer Iran’s gas to India via Pakistan, said deputy oil minister for international affairs.
“Countries such as China and Russia cannot take part in the IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline project at the current stage,“ Hossein Noqrekar-Shirazi, told Presstv.
Construction of the 2,775-kilometer pipeline, also known as the ’Peace Pipeline’, will start in 2009 and will be completed by 2012, before Iran starts exporting natural gas in 2013.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during a visit to India last month that all the agreements related to the IPI project would be finalized within 45 days.
Noqrekar-Shirazi also said that a consortium comprising of all the countries interested in the project may be formed. Once completed, the pipeline will have the capacity to transfer 2.46 billion cubic feet of natural gas from Iran’s South Pars field to Pakistan and India.

Major crude oil producer Iran has said any output hike by OPEC as sought by the US would not affect skyrocketing prices.
Oil minister said the market was ’saturated’ with crude and any output increase would not affect prices. “No, the market is saturated with oil and a hike in production does not have an impact on the price,“ Gholamhossein Nozari told Fars News Agency when asked whether OPEC would increase its output.
“This would only increase inventories,“ Nozari told reporters in reaction to US President George W. Bush pressing OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia to raise oil output.
“The market is oversupplied and increasing production will not affect prices,“ the minister said when asked whether an OPEC output hike would lower prices, which hit nearly $128 per barrel on Friday.
Saudi Arabia said that global supply was balanced with demand, but added that it had increased production by 300,000 barrels per day this month. Iran is OPEC’s No. 2 and the world’s fourth-largest exporter of oil. When prices reached $115 a barrel last month, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said oil was priced too low and that the commodity ’should find its real value’.

President Ahmadinejad has established a special working group, obliging senior economic officials, including economy minister, vice presidents and governor of the Central Bank of Iran, to coordinate among executive bodies to overhaul the economic system.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is determined to rectify the economic system from within. Therefore, by establishing special working groups, he is trying to remove the obstacles to economic prosperity.
The president’s stance vis-ˆ-vis the economy shows that he believes in economic growth coupled with socioeconomic justice and rooting out corruption.
In his latest move, he established a special working group which has obliged senior economic officials, including economy minister, vice presidents and governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) to prepare the administrative system and coordinate among executive bodies to overhaul the economic system.
The overhaul will include taxation, customs, banking, goods distribution, subsidies and fixing the value of the national currency. Details of the plan will be released in a few months.
Since assuming office in the summer of 2005, President Ahmadinejad explicitly criticized the banking system and insisted that the high banking profit rate was indefensible.
Hence, he announced that the profit rate should become single digit within five years.
Although several experts including some within the CBI objected to the move, he did not give up and assigned two special groups the task of rectifying the banking system to provide better services to clients and amending banking and monetary laws.
Another move by the president was revamping the management and planning system.
The incompetence of the system, particularly in drawing up annual budget bills, led to the dissolution of the Management and Planning Organization (MPO) last year.
The duties of the MPO were delegated to a vice president, who in turn is under the direct supervision of the chief executive.
The president’s third criticism of the economic system pertains to the insurance system, which has not grown in tandem with the country’s socioeconomic needs and cannot be a good support for developmental plans.
Ahmadinejad assigned a special group the task of identifying and removing the obstacles to the insurance system.
Ahmadinejad has so far sacked all his original macro economic administrators except the ministers of agricultural jihad and commerce.
MPs brought up an impeachment motion against minister of agricultural jihad once and the commerce minister will soon defend himself against a censure motion. The president has displayed that he is firm on meeting his target of economic overhaul.
Experts maintain that distribution of subsidies is an Achilles heel of the national economy.
They reason that subsidies, especially those on energy, are not distributed fairly among the people and the rich benefit more than the poor--the very people whose problems the subsidies are supposed to alleviate.
Ahmadinejad intends to rectify the taxation system and increase taxes on the rich. He wants to narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
His firmness in correcting the customs laws and commodities distribution system hint at the fact that the economic system has been undergoing positive changes.
The president has come in for severe criticisms for his drive to improve the economy, but it must be understood that any move for improvement and betterment naturally encounters objections. That is the rule of nature.
Obviously, everybody does not necessarily agree on one issue. At any rate, Ahmadinejad faces a tough challenge in his plan to improve the economy.

Managing director of Chabahar Free Trade-Industrial Zone on Sunday announced that an engineering delegation from China’s COMCO Machinery and Equipment Corporation visited the zone to review investment opportunities in southeastern Iran.
Talking to IRNA, Mohammad-Taher Baqerizadeh said that during its six-day visit, the delegation studied various industries such as fisheries, packaging, warehousing and cold storage facilities and a number of construction projects.
He added that Chabahar is the region’s main port for investment in view of its suitable geographical location.
Chabahar Free TradeÐIndustrial Zone was established in 1992 along with two other free trade zones Qeshm and Kish Island to use global expertise (mostly from southeast Asia) for developing the region, accelerating the completion of infrastructures, creating employment, and accessing global markets.
The zone’s importance lies in its geographical location as the shortest and the most secure route connecting central Asian states and Afghanistan to warm waters, its proximity to one of the largest oil, gas and mineral resources of the world and as the only oceanic port of the country.

Iran produces about 96 percent of saffron in the world, said a professor of Japan’s Chipa University, Ika Gami.
Speaking in a seminar on ’Saffron, Miracle of the Century’ in Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi province on Sunday, he said that the Japanese people are interested in using various herbal medicines and it is essential to offer courses on the subject in the country’s universities, Mehr News Agency reported.
“Only 15 percent of Japan’s demands for herbal medicines are provided from domestic resources,“ he said, adding that the remaining 80 percent and 5 percent are met by imports from China and other countries respectively.

About 28 million people will travel by train in the year to March 2009, said managing director of Raja Passenger Train Company, Mahmoud Jafari.
He added that the figure is equal to the number of passengers transported by 6.5 million automobiles in one year.
The official further said that Raja Company can offer its shares in the stock market in the coming years and become one of the leading companies in the region’s rail transport sector, Fars News Agency reported.
Jafari stated that number of passengers traveling by train in the year to March 2008 increased by 3.2 million compared to the figure for the preceding year, saving 1,700 billion rials in energy costs.
On average, Iranians travel by train for trips of over 580 kms. The occupancy rate of train seats which was 85 percent in the year to March 2007 reached 95 percent last year.
The company has 1,337 cars of which 1,074 are in use.