New prices for polymer and chemical materials were announced today on Sun., Feb. 16th., 2020. Officially, the PDID Office of NPC should determine and announce these prices based on two factors, a) The global polymer price changes and b) The weekly average US$ price variations.

Apparently these soft instruments have been supposed to operate in order to prevent the materials smuggling and supporting the converting industries through prevention of materials shortage. However irrespective of its mission, and as we have noticed several times, the PDID Office of NPC is always trying to manipulate the materials (mainly polymer) markets according to the wishes of the petrochemical companies.

Such a unique system for materials pricing and market bahaviour and manipulations,brings a doubt round the corner Such a semi-criminal thinking is that how we have disappointed many nations from our daily lives? Why we can’t adjust our business sectors with its global counterparts?

To answer these questions, we are trying to integrate our studies and publish it as a handybook of trade with Iran and vise-versa!
As an apparent example we can focus on an event. It has been several weeks that the global prices have returned to their downward trend, with the decline in China’s demand as the world’s largest consumer of polymers as well as the decline in oil prices as major reasons for the decline in polymers globally.
However since another factor involved in the discovery formula of the base prices of polymers and other chemicals in the Iranian market, that is, the average US$ value, has been rising for some time, which, in spite of the global trend in the polymer prices, has helped Iran base prices with an incremental leverage.
This week the value rise of the US$ has broken a record high.This record that belongs to the “NIMA” currency system has set this week’s value of US$ to Rls. 127.451.
Now, let’s see the effect of this new official evaluation of US$ for the week (Sun. Feb. 16th-23rd) how has affected the polymer prices in Iran and only at the IME’s petrochemical hall.

The following table shows the price differentiation between last week (Feb., 3-9th) and this week (Feb. 9th. 16th) after new base price announcements, 

During last week, a tot number of 156 bids were run at the IME hall for petrochemicals,out of which there were 145 successful trades registered. The five highest purchases that recorded for buy at once are as follow:

As it is shown materials like PET, PVC and PE are very competitive and interesting at the last month of the Iranian year.

To compare the amount f supply, offering and trading volumes, you may consider the following table:

And finally at the next table you will see, like every week, the total amount of trades of materials at the petrochemical hall of IME.

Table III: Last week’s (Feb. 9-16th.) trade figures at IME hall, including prices and ODTv indexes