so Iranian Mullas have sustained their self reliability in industrial sector, without any western support
Yes as you say Mullahs are the only clergies who also are scientists and engineers!
but seriously speaking... No, Iran has learned a lot from other western and eastern companies.... In fact Iran was a sole assembler in many industries until around 2000-2005 and it is still dependent on foreign help in some industries but it is a decade now that Iran passed that stage and found enough confidence to make independent steps... It is actually nearly a decade that Iranian public and private sector companies matured enough to dare to design and build thier own brands...
Iran has one of the most diverse industries among all industrilized and semi-industrialized nations.... Most of Iranian industries are small and medium scale... There are hundreds of industries and sub-industries in Iran today... Just like any other industrialized nation, Iran has advantages on some specific sectors and has some sectors still in its baby phase...
Today in 2015, The biggest industries of Iran in terms of number of brands and turn over are :
These industries have +billion dollar of turn over:
1- Oil and Petrochemical Industry
2- Automotive Industry (both factories and part builders)
3- Defense Industries
4- Steel and other metals processing factories
5- Pharmaceutical Industry (from simple tablets up to the isotope radio active drugs)
6- Food processing Industry
7- Mining and its related industries
8- Chemical products (from complex formulas down to the hand washing liquids)
9- Construction Material industries (from wall bricks up to the new composite and advanced covering for windows and building itself)
9- Engineering Services Industry (private and public companies that build dams, power plants, silos, roads, rail roads, floating oil rigs, onshore facilities, etc)
These industries have +100 million dollar of turn over:
1- Machinery System(heavy and light machines or systems, i.e CNC machines...grinding...cutting machines and etc...)
2- Telecommunication Industry (building whatever parts or systems it needs... Still the most sensitive systems are imported but since the sanction tightening, even these sensitive systems are under developement locally)
3- Nano Technology industries (both machinery producers and nano material consumer factories)
4- Agriculture Machinery
5- Electronics (from LCD tvs up to the complex semi-conductors)
6- Renewable Energy Technology and System Builders (Wind, Solar, Earth Thermal, Sea Wave, etc )
7- Commercial Ship Building Industry
8- IT companies (from building applications and e-commerce up to building Video Games, Soft and Hardware and related parts)
There are literally hundreds of sub-category industries in Iran but they are either still a baby industry or are not competent enough to compete with imported products....
Industry constitutes nearly %40 of Iranian GDP.. It means:
Industry creates $160 Billion dollars of international dollars for Iran each year if taken by exchange rate which dived down by 3 times since sanctions tightened 3 years ago...
Industry creates $520 Billion worth of dollars if taken by its purchasing power in Iran...
Based on many studies Iranian existing industries are only active by %50 of its optimum capacity... Mostly due to sanctions and lifting the subsidies on energy that caused many factories to lose the ground against foreign competitors... Horrible Ahmadi Nejad policy toward cheaper IMPORTS due to high prices of oil and his populist nature also left the doors for China to enter the resilient industries and destroy it...
Hopefully, the incompetent companies are losing ground and many of them are out of market... This led Iranian industry to welcome new more competitive companies.. Although with the sanctions lifted, there will be a huge flow of international companies enter Iranian market and this will cause more Iranian companies to close down... but the new wave of high tech industries that Iranian companies are producing is a very good sign that Iran is heading in a correct path... There are very good signs that universities are more connected to industries and more companies spend on R&D... More effort on making known brands and promoting them internationally.. More companies are asking Modern Management and Efficiency experts to help them be more efficient and agile... Actually, the recent sanctions helped Iranian industry a lot too... It opened many eyes..and based on foreign studies...Iranian companies now are much more agile and adaptive therefore less prone to risk of failure due to unexpected conditions... This gives me a wishful future for Iranian industries...
Based on my own observations, recently (in last 5 to 10 years) there are more and more new companies that are led by young talented experts and are acting very professionally... Today, we see more and more global-level companies that know what to do to be able to create a reputation for themselves in international markets... I remember we used to go to Turkey or Russia or Poland and sometimes Italy to import some not so high tech machines and systems... Today, I can see that more and more Iranian companies are exporting their own machines and systems to those same countries... I have a friend who has a company that provide Production lines for new factories.... I remember 10 years ago when he always needed to travel to Europe to buy these complicated production lines... Today he is busy with local engineering companies who can provide whatever you can think of with the same or even sometimes better quality for much lower prices...
The recent jump up in Iranian science and industry is a clear result of millions of young graduates who came to market with passionate feelings of CHANGE.... I believe in Iranian young scientists and engineers... They already made us proud... I see young factory owners that despite their law profit margin still love what they do and always trying hard to make the Iranian industry better and better... This is why I believe they will shine once again... I can promise that....
But honestly, I know what they feel when they see what Iranians are doing...but I can assure that I will be even happier if I see all ME nations to wake up and depend on their own capabilities and lose that devastating low-self confidence...
Hopefully soon, we'll see the results of even more impressive work.
