The clerical regime’s mismanagement has devasted all fields of Iran’s economy and plundered the country’s national resources. One of the economic zones the regime has destroyed and plundered is the steel industry.
Iran’s steel industry is one of the most important sources of income for the country at home and abroad.
Like other aspects of Iran’s economy, the regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) has monopolized the country’s steel industry. The IRGC-affiliated mafia, which controls Iran’s steel industry, has increased the domestic price of steel products. Thus, the price of products, directly or indirectly, related to steel has also increased.
“Habibullah Ansari, president of the Home Appliances Industry Association, said: ‘a 212% increase in steel prices and an average increase of 150 percent in production input was the reason for the increase in home appliance prices,” the state-run Akharin Khabar, or Latest News, website reported on October 27.
Mullah Alireza Salimi, a Member of Parliament (Majles), also acknowledged how the government sells steel at a higher price in the domestic market, according to the state-run Majles news agency on October 27.
“People have to purchase steel $100 higher than its export price. Why do we sell steel in this fashion to our people while exporting the surplus steel we have? In the first six months of this year, about 22% of the bullion was offered on the stock exchange. Where did the rest go? This has created an overselling in this product. That’s the first problem.”
Salimi also acknowledged how the regime’s organized mafias are controlling Iran’s steel industry.
“The second problem here is the existence of a complicated mafia [in the steel industry]. The third problem is a lack of transparency. We exported at least 16 million tons of steel last year (2019). In other words, last year, we earned about $5 billion through steel exports. The question is how this currency has entered the country’s economic cycle? Has it returned or not? How was the returned amount used?”
The plundered $5 billion revenue of steel export is equivalent to all Iranian people’s cash subsidies for nearly four years and equal to the annual salary of more than six million workers, who earn $71 a month.
How corruption in the steel industry affect workers’ life?
On March 18, 2018, the state-run Student News Network (SNN) website reported: “The National Steel Industrial Group, which is the second-largest producer of crude steel in the country and had the highest production record in the country, was managed under the supervision of the judiciary after the discovery of corruption in this complex and its relationship with the country’s two largest banks.”
“The company has now been privatized, and the new employer cannot pay the workers, and despite promises by officials, the factory workers have not been paid for four months.”
While workers have lost their jobs and were grappling with poverty, the SNN reported, “The second group of the national group steel production line has 60% physical progress and has remained undecided for many years.”
The unknown fate of $5 billion in the steel industry, like other massive corruption in the petrochemical and oil industries, is among the tens of billions of dollars of foreign exchange that has not been returned to the country for the export of goods.
While people are under severe economic pressure, those stealing this amount of money are pursuing their goals in a safe political margin.
As Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), has said: “Iran’s crumbling economy cannot be saved unless by toppling the regime. Expanding the protests to bring down the corrupt regime of theft and destruction is the only solution.”
Source » ncr-iran