Ahmadinejad Seeking to Facilitate Foreign Investment in Iran

Ahmadinejad Seeking to Facilitate Foreign Investment in Iran
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered a recently-formed work group to find and obviate problems and obstacles in the way of foreign investment in the country.




The announcement was made by First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters, Rahimi stressed that Ahmadinejad's administration has taken effective steps in eliminating barriers in the way of foreign investment in Iran, and added, "The government is resolved to remove bureaucracy and impediments to investment in the country."

He also reiterated that Iran will take the necessary decisions and adopt the required solutions to obviate obstacles to foreign investments in the country and will question and punish the law-breaking bodies in this regard.

Iranian officials have recently announced that despite the current decline in the flow of capital and foreign investment throughout the world, the country has attracted billions of dollars of foreign investment.

"Iran ranked the sixth in attracting foreign investment in spite of the fact that foreign investment witnessed a minus 35 percent growth in the world," Iran's Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Shamseddin Hosseini announced in August.

The minister announced that Iran attracted over $3bln of foreign investment in 2009 which showed an 87% increase compared with the same period in 2008.

Also, Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Behrouz Alishiri said in July that the new UN Security Council sanctions against Iran are ineffective as the volume of transactions in Iran's investment market shows a 10 percent growth since the ratification of the UN resolution.