NCRI – According to the chairman of the Iranian regime’s House of Industry, Mining and Trade, “if we assume that the amount of smuggled goods imported into the country is about 20 billion dollars, then nearly 800 thousand trucks will be needed in order to handle this amount.”
Referring to the remarks made by the regime’s official, the state newspaper Arman writes on November 21 that “these remarks are made at a time when according to (Iranian regime’s) officials, smuggling is one of Iran’s major economic problems which is affected by different issues. Non-profitability of domestic production, unemployment among people living near borders, etc. are some of the issues fueling the smuggling of goods in Iran. There are various reports on the amount of smuggled goods, according to some of which, the amount of smuggled goods imported into Iran is more than Iran’s official exports.”
The newspaper then quotes Ghasem Khorshidi, the head of the Department of Combating Smuggled Goods and Currencies, as admitting an organized smuggling and saying:”the amount of smuggled goods in 2015 was about 15 and a half billion dollars. We definitely cannot say that this amount of smuggled goods is imported into Iran using dhows or by individual traffickers, as the smugglers need special equipments such as cargo trucks and well-equipped containers in order to handle this amount.”