Government’s mobile set 300 million dollars loss in 2007-2008: official

“More than 80 percent of the market was swarmed by smuggled handsets which sustained loss to the government and, eventually, to the consumers,” the president of the union of mobile handsets, sim cards and accessories Afshar Froutan Larijani told Mobna news agency.
He elaborated that the government was not able to collect the tariffs, due to set smuggling.
“8 million sim cards were sold across the county in the same period, but only 2 million handsets had been imported legally and the rest been imported illegally.” he added.
“The illegal import made the government lose around 300 million dollars because of customs revenues at the 25 percent import rate was lost.” He added.
He added that such lost was due to hasty decisions made by the relevant authorities.
Froutan Larijani said that the main reason for this has been frequent changes of import tariffs which resulted in smugglers making hefty profits.

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