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Abolghasem Agahhossein Shirazi was quoted as saying. Iran’s clothing industry remains traditionally based on in-store shopping unlike in the West where many consumers now prefer to shop online.
"Sales of clothing are down to almost zero compared to last year when the market was booming and Iranian production was stable. Unfortunately the coronavirus outbreak has dealt a fatal blow to clothing manufacturers," Shirazi said.
The latest severe decline of the Iranian rial (IRR) was yet to affect offered prices on clothing as an abundance of items was already sewn before it began, noted Shirazi. However, items produced after the new Persian year commenced on March 20 were seeing 30% to 40% price hikes due to the weaker rial driving up costs on imported raw materials, he added.
“As people are housebound, they have few or no requirements for new clothes and the industry now has a glut of items to move,” Shirazi concluded.
9.1.10 Property & construction sector news
Iran’s urban development minister says Raisi’s mass housing plan ‘not inflationary’
Iran’s new Minister for Roads and Urban Development Rostam Qasemi has insisted that the Raisi administration’s plan to build 1mn homes a year over its four-year term of office will not add to inflation in the economy, IBENA reported.
President Ebrahim Raisi stated in his election campaign manifesto how he wanted 4mn new homes built for his countrymen as part of a new social housing plan. However, he immediately came under fire for imitating the Maskan e-Mehr ( “Sun” or “Friendship” Housing) plan of the Ahmadinejad era of a decade ago, widely viewed as a failed scheme that left derelict tower blocks across the country due to poor planning and shoddy work performed by contractors.
“Some say the construction of one million housing units will create inflation, but that will not be the case because we will not use government resources to build these units, we have formulated [other] ways to finance this programme, which are not inflationary,” Qasemi was quoted as saying.
He added: "We will soon see measures taken in this period to build the one million housing units per year. And during this time, infrastructure will be provided for a serious leap in production.”
Qasemi added that at a recent construction materials exhibition in Tehran, he encountered startup companies offering methods for low-rise buildings that could form part of the programme.
The predecessor Rouhani administration also attempted to fix the housing crisis in Iran with low-cost homes, but it built only a fraction of what it intended due to ongoing property market shocks caused by very high inflation, sparked by the US reimposition of sanctions on Iran from 2018.
In a parting move, the Rouhani government pushed ahead with plans to build 1.3mn units.
Critics have complained that Maskan-e-Mehr projects are populist initiatives that can tank the property market with a great number of poorly-built properties appearing on the market in areas surrounding cities at the same time. In recent years, a significant number of people who moved into such properties have complained of a lack of utilities including gas connections and bus links to nearby cities.
58 IRAN Country Report November 2021 www.intellinews.com