The head of the Syndicate of Paper and Cardboard Manufacturers said, “The governmental managers told me that I was supporting dead production, but if the same dead production had been supported, it would meet the major requirement of the market.”

Abolfazl Roghani, the head of the Syndicate of Paper and Cardboard Manufacturers, in an interview with the cultural reporter of Tasnim News Agency, referring to the interference of the first vice president in the issue of domestic production of paper and said, “The annual capacity of domestic writing paper production is 150 thousand tons. Of course this capacity can be increased up to 200 thousand tons, but the achieved capacity is 150 thousand tons which is produced by Pars, Mazandaran, and Tabriz Paper Making factories, and all three factories can produce high – quality paper, but we should attribute current problem to past problem which was the lack of supporting domestic goods, which caused these factories to set their production line for the production of more profitable products.”

He continued, “As a result, these factories dropped the production of writing paper and proceeded to make more profitable paper. In the past years, a lot of attempts were made to support domestic production of paper, but I am afraid we came to a point where there is no interest and attraction to produce today while, as I said before, we have the ability to produce 200 tons out of the annual requirements of 380 thousand tons of the country.”

Roghani reiterated, “There are a lot of reasons why paper is not produced in current situation the most important of which is the lack of raw material such as wood and pulp. However, setting appropriate laws and supporting production can easily resolve these problems.”

Referring to the letter sent to the first vice president by some of publishers on supporting paper production and complaining of the market situation, he said, “These friends who sometime complain never used to receive any domestic production at all and acknowledged that the domestic paper did not have quality or was expensive and so on…”

The former CEO of the Mazandaran Wood and Paper Factory, stating that there has always been a tendency to imports in Iran, noted, “When the domestic paper was produced and  enjoyed good boom, the market tended to import and complained that the domestic quality should rise. Such discussion or debates and lack of supports caused the factories to gradually put aside their production.”

Complaining from the governmental section, he added, “The more we insist on supporting domestic production of paper the more useless it was so that governmental officials criticized us and said that we were supporting dead production. However, if this dead production had been supported, it would resolve a part of paper crisis now.”

In response to the question whether the domestic production has currently reached the zero level, Roghani said, “Some companies are producing their obligations. Production has not stopped completely, but production lines are operating one tenth or one twentieth of their capacities.Today, the government has allocated the USD at the exchange rate of 4200Tomans, which can solve the people’s requirement to medicine, to paper imports. A lot of order registrations have been recorded on paper market which shows we have chosen the wrong route.”

Pointing to the solution in order to exit the current situation, he added, “In the short term, we can allocate suitable foreign currencies to pave the way for the imports of raw materials to the country, but in long term we need to lay down appropriate rules, reform tariff system, remove barriers, provide suitable facilities and … which can help production. Today, one of the biggest barriers of domestic paper production in the problem with importing timbers from Russia.”

Pointing to the interference of the Ministry of Islamic Guidance in the issue of paper, the head of the Syndicate of Paper and Cardboard Manufacturers noted, “There happened disputes between Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Guidance. I believe, there should be a centralized system for paper imports, and it should take advantage of the private companies in this field, but the foeign currencies allocated to paper was given to the people who took the currencies and did not import paper in the past.”

Stating that the Ministry of Islamic Guidance can only announce the requirements of the country in tons and cannot have another role, he emphasized, “The Ministry of Industry and private sector can be more useful in this field.”