Iranian Union Urges Revocation of a Circular Avoiding Job Loss
The Iranian National Cooperative Union of Petrochemical downstream industries’ cooperatives (NCUP) has written a plea to the government asking for the revocation of a circular that has severely damaged petrochemicals downstream industries’ production and jobs.
In a letter to Vice President for Executive Affairs Mohammad Shariatmadari, the Union has called for the annulment of a circular issued by the country’s deputy minister of industry in 2014, deeming it responsible for heavy losses.
The activists believe that the circular_ which allows petrochemical companies to sell their products in the free market once they have put them on the mercantile exchange market twice_ lacks legal justification.
They hold that the circular has severely restricted their access to domestically produced raw materials.
In the letter, the Union has maintained that following the governmental decree dated July 3, 2014, domestic petrochemical product fell drastically and the number of jobs in the sector shrunk by 180,000.
The letter adds that by the end of last Iranian fiscal year (March 19, 2015), the circular had caused a damage of 1,330,561,150,000,000 Rials ($44.1 billion) to downstream petrochemical firms, also causing a 20-percent hike in production costs and a production decline of 28 percent last Iranian year compared to the year before the government issued the authorization.
Maintaining that each million tons of plastics products entails 200,000 stable job opportunities, the writers of the letter demand an end to the implementation of the circular “in order to create 2,600,000 stable jobs”.
“NCUP” with two supporting websites:
http://:petronn.com/
http://www.ncup.ir/
is a true Iranian national union composed of almost all active cooperatives of “Downstream Industries” in different cities and provinces of Iran. These cooperatives have been formed according to the Iranian Trade and Commercial Rules and have an active part in export/import activities of their members.
Playing the role of a Master, NCUP, has gathered all small cooperatives under one umbrella and tried to synchronize the national rules and subsidies for all of them in a liberal basis. In this vital role, NCUP has been very successful to force the Government for justification of its behaviour towards the members of more than 150 cooperatives being under the NCUP roof.
The following chart shows the production capacity of the Iranian petrochemical industries:
