Sayed Mohammad Hosseini: Where does the production subsidy go?
Member of the Central Provincial Miners' Association: The government is not alone in its reluctance to subsidize production. The country's banking system, too, does not support producers and give us no loans.
According to the International Stone Exhibition of Iran, the director of one of the local stone mines in Mahalat announced the decline in the activity of the miners and said: "Currently many small mines are closed and our mine is operating at one-fifth the capacity, the tax is so high that No money left for the miner.
Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini also cited the Ministry of Industry's restrictions on stone loading as one of the reasons for the decline in production, saying that the Ministry of Industry has recently reduced tonnes and set a loading ceiling, which is unknown to miners.
Sayed Mohammad Hosseini described the problem of expensive fuel and second-hand machinery as the source of many of the miners' problems and said that the machinery used by the miners is mostly second-hand and inefficient machinery coming from other countries.
He added: "Most of these machines have a shelf life and have a high depreciation. On the other hand, in this situation the inadequate fueling and high cost of gasoline have cost the miners a lot of money." There is no government or bank support for the miners to replace these machines.
Hosseini assessed the government's promise to subsidize production contrary to the objectives of the targeted subsidy plan, saying that it was intended to be subsidized to producers when it becomes expensive from the revenue generated through it. But we have not been given a subsidy for production.
He added: "The only thing the government is reluctant to do is subsidize production. The country's banking system, too, is not in favor of producers, and they are not giving us any loans."
Sayed Mohammad Hosseini described the situation of the stone factories as unfavorable and said that domestic buyers had no purchasing power. Currently most of our ore buyers are Chinese.
He added: "Of course, they do not buy stone like we used to in the Chinese market. The Chinese are, of course, only customers of certain types of travertine.
