Reports from Isfahan indicates a wide spread strike by Isfahan bazaar. It is directed against Ahmadinejad gang and its tax laws for sales taxes. Signs of break down of Isfahan-Tehran Power Axis and signals a breakdown in Ahmadinejad regime's power structure.
Comments by Azeri Turks on Isfahan:
MANY OF THEM HAVE BEEN MAKING MONEY BY SUPPORTING THE REGIME.
MANY HAVE BEEN GOING TO SEE THAT PERSIAN TOILET IN MECCA AND THEY HAVE
BECOME MORE SAG ARABS THAN NATURAL BORN SAG ARABS.
I SAY INCREASE THEIR TAXES MORE SO THEY FEEL THE MISERIES OF MANY IRANIANS.
3% INCREASE IS NOT ENOUGH
Iran Bazaars on strike
Shopkeepers in the Iranian cities of Isfahan, Mashhad, Tabriz and Tehran have staged strikes to protest against the introduction of value added tax (VAT), newspapers reported on Wednesday.
Shops in the bazaar of the central city of Isfahan, Iran's third largest, have been shut for several days to protest against the VAT of 3 percent introduced by the government.
Aaround 3,000 shopkeepers gathered on Monday outside the Isfahan governor's office to protest against the new tax, introduced on September 22.
Major traders at the bazaar have withdrawn their money from banks in the city to protest against the measure, saying it will cause price increases which they will have to pass on to consumers.
Some shopkeepers in Tehran's main bazaar also took part in the protest on Wednesday, an AFP correspondent witnessed. Some stallholders in the jewellery, gold and textile sections closed their shutters.
"If the government does not back down, we will continue until it does," one jeweller told AFP asking not to be named.
A textile dealer told AFP that while other sections of the bazaar remained open, "this movement can expand."
In the big northwestern city of Tabriz, gold dealers and jewellers have gone on strike, the ISNA news agency reported.
Rises in retail prices have accelerated since new mullahs' government took power in 2005.
In September, the cost of a basket of 45 staple food items was up 50 percent on a year earlier, press reports said.
Annual inflation topped 29 percent in the Iranian calendar month that ended on September 21.
Bazaars in Iran play an important political as well as economic role. Bazaar merchants contributed to the 1979 "Islamic mobs takeover", when they went on long strikes.
------------------------
By NAZILA FATHI
Published by The Times, October 10, 2008
TEHRAN — Merchants in traditional bazaars in several large cities closed their shops this week to protest a decision by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to enforce the nation’s first ever sales tax.
The protests, the largest since Mr. Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005, began Saturday in the central city of Isfahan when jewelers closed their shops, newspapers reported Wednesday. The strike spread, and by Tuesday bazaars in the cities of Shiraz, Tabriz, Qazvin and Mashhad had followed suit. The police clashed Wednesday with a group of shopkeepers who gathered outside the bazaar in Isfahan, the daily newspaper Sarmayeh reported.
Bazaars are the backbone of the country’s traditional economy. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, merchants allied with the clergy, and their strikes helped overthrow the government.
They still wield significant power, and this is the first time since the revolution that they have protested on such a large scale. The news media refrained from reporting the protests until Wednesday because of the delicacy of the issue.
Although the strike appeared to be a reaction to the sudden enforcement of the tax law, analysts said the driving issue was really the worsening of the economy.
“These protests are not the result of the tax law,” said Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst and an economist in Tehran. He added, “These shopkeepers are the middle class who are fed up with the pressures and are now showing their frustration in a civil protest.”
Last year, Parliament approved Iran’s first value-added tax, a 3 percent levy on all products except basic commodities like dairy products and bread.
But enforcement of the law began only on Sept. 21. The speaker of Parliament, Ali Larijani, said the law finally had to be put in place since it had been passed by Parliament, the ISCA news agency reported.
Merchants, however, said the sales tax could lead to a further surge in prices and a drop in their sales.
Mohammad Abbassi, a carpet salesman in Tehran’s bazaar, said business was bad even before the law was adopted.
“Every day I opened and closed the shop without anyone coming to say hi or ask a price, for God’s sake,” he said. “What will happen if we increase the prices by another 3 percent?”
Merchants demanded that the law be dropped or postponed.
The newspaper Sarmayeh reported Thursday that the authorities had agreed to delay the law for three months, but only on gold products, in an effort to persuade merchants in Tehran to open their shops.
The head of the Association of Guilds, Mohammad Azad, told the newspaper that the three-month delay would give enough time to resolve some issues under contention, but that the law would eventually be put in place.
“We’ve had no agreements, but all our efforts are aimed at convincing the merchants to open their shops,” he said.
The decision to enforce the law is seen as an effort by Mr. Ahmadinejad to increase the government’s revenue. Economists predict that within months he could face a budget deficit of nearly $50 billion. Iran’s economy is heavily dependent on oil, the prices of which have declined since this summer.
Economists blame Mr. Ahmadinejad’s economic policies for the inflation. The Central Bank said Wednesday that Iran’s annual inflation rate had risen to 29.4 percent in September.
Sarmayeh reported Thursday that the price of red meat in October was 23 percent higher than this time last year.
In a televised address on Tuesday, Mr. Ahmadinejad dismissed the statistics, asserting that inflation had started to fall in the past six months. He referred to the decline in the value of real estate as an example.
He also vowed to cut government subsidies on energy and basic commodities and to redistribute the money as payouts directly to citizens, a measure that some members of Parliament called “an empty promise.”
------------------------
By REUTERS
October 11, 2008
Filed at 1:36 a.m. ET
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's president ordered the suspension of a new value added tax (VAT) scheme after it sparked protests among influential bazaar merchants in Tehran and other cities, Iranian media reported on Saturday.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose government also plans other economic reforms in the world's fourth-largest oil producer ahead of a 2009 election, has told the Finance Ministry to put the measure on hold for two months, newspapers said.
The move came a few days after gold jewelry merchants and some other bazaar traders in cities including the capital Tehran and Isfahan closed their shops to protest last month's introduction of a 3 percent VAT.
Such work stoppages among bazaar merchants, an historically powerful business group, are rare in the Islamic Republic.
"This (the strike by shop-owners) has pushed the government to announce that it will review the new VAT mechanism," Iran's Press TV said.
The ISNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad, widely expected to run for a second four-year term in a presidential election in June next year despite criticism over his economic policies, as saying in a letter to Finance Minister Shamseddin Hosseini:
"In order to correctly execute this law and to study obstacles and problems and easing concerns ... it is necessary (for you) to give me a plan and a proper solution within two months for the execution of this law."
During this time, implementation of the VAT legislation would be suspended, Ahmadinejad said, adding the minister should consult with union representatives.
Bazaar shop-owners feared that the VAT would increase prices and lower demand for their products. The government rejected the criticism and argued the overall tax burden would not increase.
The VAT measure forms part of wider economic reforms planned by Ahmadinejad, who came to power in 2005 pledging to share out Iran's oil wealth more fairly but has come under fire for his failure to rein in steadily climbing double-digit inflation.
The government wants to change Iran's extensive subsidy system to target payments more directly to those in need, but critics say it risks further stoking inflation, now running at 29.4 percent year-on-year.
Iran has reaped windfall oil revenue in recent years but analysts say foreign companies have become more wary of investing in the Middle Eastern country due to increased tension with the West over Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
Iran says its nuclear activities are solely intended to produce electricity, but its refusal to halt sensitive atomic work has drawn three rounds of U.N. sanctions since 2006.
Iran’s traders move to revive power base
Published By FT Times: October 14 2008
The mood in the Tehran baazar on Monday was confused. Some of the grey shutters in the vaulted passageways of the bazaar remained firmly closed, others were open for business while yet more were half open-half closed, perhaps reflecting that many bazaaris – merchants – were in two minds over whether to continue their strike against the government of president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad.
Over the past week merchants in some of the biggest bazaars in Iran have been closed in protest at the imposition of a 3 per cent value added tax. On Sunday Tehran joined the dispute in spite of the fact the government announced late last week that it was to “postpone” imposition of the levy.
But the reaction in Tehran – where traders have demanded the suspension of the tax not just its postponement – has fuelled suspicions that traders are using the issue as an opportunity to remind the regime of the bazaaris’ historical economic and political power and that it could be exerted again.
Still more suspect the bazaari protest is turning into a political battlefield with the opponents of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad, encouraging the strike to bring pressure on him ahead of the presidential election next June.
“You can track political rivalries and see politicians showing muscles in the bazaar,” says one trader.
The bazaaris rendered crucial support to the 1979 revolution. But this strike is the first of its kind against the Islamic regime.
The atmosphere in Tehran’s bazaar, with closed shops, has prompted comparisons with the revolutionary days, with many traders nostalgic for the time when anti-government riots helped topple the Shah and the bazaaris had more economic and political influence than they can muster today.
“We should not be happy with anything less than [the] collapse of [Mr] Ahmadi-Nejad’s government,” says one old trader who argues that the strike should continue.
Many analysts say the bazaaris today largely stand where they were before the revolution in terms of frustration with the government, but the emergence of modern trading companies and shopping malls has reduced their influence.
There is also a new element: many of the modern economic centres are suspected to be affiliated or endorsed by the elite Revolutionary Guards and intelligence services, making rivalry extremely difficult for bazaaris. The bazaaris fear their wealth and power is diminishing and modern trade centres are replacing them, says Mohammad-Reza Behzadian, former head of Tehran chamber of commerce.
The trend is leading to the establishment of a new class of entrepreneurs sweeping power away from traditional traders and ignoring their past contribution.
“The bazaari’s fundamental protest is not against tax. Rather, it is against being ignored,” says Saeed Laylaz, an analyst. “It is weeping like a class worried about extinction.”
Despite a diminishing influence, the geographical concentration of thousands of shops sprawling through hundreds of narrow streets in one district gives the bazaari a unique position and a base of power which is not replicated among other classes.
“It takes probably less than an hour for a few old bazaaris just to walk along the bazaar and ask others to shut the whole bazaar,” says Mr Behzadian.
Although analysts believe the good old days of the bazaari are over and doubt recent protests have the capacity to evolve to a national movement or create any major economic crisis, they warn about its social impact at a time when inflation stands at 29.4 per cent and is growing.
Comments by Azeri Turks on Isfahan:
MANY OF THEM HAVE BEEN MAKING MONEY BY SUPPORTING THE REGIME.
MANY HAVE BEEN GOING TO SEE THAT PERSIAN TOILET IN MECCA AND THEY HAVE
BECOME MORE SAG ARABS THAN NATURAL BORN SAG ARABS.
I SAY INCREASE THEIR TAXES MORE SO THEY FEEL THE MISERIES OF MANY IRANIANS.
3% INCREASE IS NOT ENOUGH
Iran Bazaars on strike
Shopkeepers in the Iranian cities of Isfahan, Mashhad, Tabriz and Tehran have staged strikes to protest against the introduction of value added tax (VAT), newspapers reported on Wednesday.
Shops in the bazaar of the central city of Isfahan, Iran's third largest, have been shut for several days to protest against the VAT of 3 percent introduced by the government.
Aaround 3,000 shopkeepers gathered on Monday outside the Isfahan governor's office to protest against the new tax, introduced on September 22.
Major traders at the bazaar have withdrawn their money from banks in the city to protest against the measure, saying it will cause price increases which they will have to pass on to consumers.
Some shopkeepers in Tehran's main bazaar also took part in the protest on Wednesday, an AFP correspondent witnessed. Some stallholders in the jewellery, gold and textile sections closed their shutters.
"If the government does not back down, we will continue until it does," one jeweller told AFP asking not to be named.
A textile dealer told AFP that while other sections of the bazaar remained open, "this movement can expand."
In the big northwestern city of Tabriz, gold dealers and jewellers have gone on strike, the ISNA news agency reported.
Rises in retail prices have accelerated since new mullahs' government took power in 2005.
In September, the cost of a basket of 45 staple food items was up 50 percent on a year earlier, press reports said.
Annual inflation topped 29 percent in the Iranian calendar month that ended on September 21.
Bazaars in Iran play an important political as well as economic role. Bazaar merchants contributed to the 1979 "Islamic mobs takeover", when they went on long strikes.
------------------------
By NAZILA FATHI
Published by The Times, October 10, 2008
TEHRAN — Merchants in traditional bazaars in several large cities closed their shops this week to protest a decision by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to enforce the nation’s first ever sales tax.
The protests, the largest since Mr. Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005, began Saturday in the central city of Isfahan when jewelers closed their shops, newspapers reported Wednesday. The strike spread, and by Tuesday bazaars in the cities of Shiraz, Tabriz, Qazvin and Mashhad had followed suit. The police clashed Wednesday with a group of shopkeepers who gathered outside the bazaar in Isfahan, the daily newspaper Sarmayeh reported.
Bazaars are the backbone of the country’s traditional economy. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, merchants allied with the clergy, and their strikes helped overthrow the government.
They still wield significant power, and this is the first time since the revolution that they have protested on such a large scale. The news media refrained from reporting the protests until Wednesday because of the delicacy of the issue.
Although the strike appeared to be a reaction to the sudden enforcement of the tax law, analysts said the driving issue was really the worsening of the economy.
“These protests are not the result of the tax law,” said Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst and an economist in Tehran. He added, “These shopkeepers are the middle class who are fed up with the pressures and are now showing their frustration in a civil protest.”
Last year, Parliament approved Iran’s first value-added tax, a 3 percent levy on all products except basic commodities like dairy products and bread.
But enforcement of the law began only on Sept. 21. The speaker of Parliament, Ali Larijani, said the law finally had to be put in place since it had been passed by Parliament, the ISCA news agency reported.
Merchants, however, said the sales tax could lead to a further surge in prices and a drop in their sales.
Mohammad Abbassi, a carpet salesman in Tehran’s bazaar, said business was bad even before the law was adopted.
“Every day I opened and closed the shop without anyone coming to say hi or ask a price, for God’s sake,” he said. “What will happen if we increase the prices by another 3 percent?”
Merchants demanded that the law be dropped or postponed.
The newspaper Sarmayeh reported Thursday that the authorities had agreed to delay the law for three months, but only on gold products, in an effort to persuade merchants in Tehran to open their shops.
The head of the Association of Guilds, Mohammad Azad, told the newspaper that the three-month delay would give enough time to resolve some issues under contention, but that the law would eventually be put in place.
“We’ve had no agreements, but all our efforts are aimed at convincing the merchants to open their shops,” he said.
The decision to enforce the law is seen as an effort by Mr. Ahmadinejad to increase the government’s revenue. Economists predict that within months he could face a budget deficit of nearly $50 billion. Iran’s economy is heavily dependent on oil, the prices of which have declined since this summer.
Economists blame Mr. Ahmadinejad’s economic policies for the inflation. The Central Bank said Wednesday that Iran’s annual inflation rate had risen to 29.4 percent in September.
Sarmayeh reported Thursday that the price of red meat in October was 23 percent higher than this time last year.
In a televised address on Tuesday, Mr. Ahmadinejad dismissed the statistics, asserting that inflation had started to fall in the past six months. He referred to the decline in the value of real estate as an example.
He also vowed to cut government subsidies on energy and basic commodities and to redistribute the money as payouts directly to citizens, a measure that some members of Parliament called “an empty promise.”
------------------------
By REUTERS
October 11, 2008
Filed at 1:36 a.m. ET
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's president ordered the suspension of a new value added tax (VAT) scheme after it sparked protests among influential bazaar merchants in Tehran and other cities, Iranian media reported on Saturday.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose government also plans other economic reforms in the world's fourth-largest oil producer ahead of a 2009 election, has told the Finance Ministry to put the measure on hold for two months, newspapers said.
The move came a few days after gold jewelry merchants and some other bazaar traders in cities including the capital Tehran and Isfahan closed their shops to protest last month's introduction of a 3 percent VAT.
Such work stoppages among bazaar merchants, an historically powerful business group, are rare in the Islamic Republic.
"This (the strike by shop-owners) has pushed the government to announce that it will review the new VAT mechanism," Iran's Press TV said.
The ISNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad, widely expected to run for a second four-year term in a presidential election in June next year despite criticism over his economic policies, as saying in a letter to Finance Minister Shamseddin Hosseini:
"In order to correctly execute this law and to study obstacles and problems and easing concerns ... it is necessary (for you) to give me a plan and a proper solution within two months for the execution of this law."
During this time, implementation of the VAT legislation would be suspended, Ahmadinejad said, adding the minister should consult with union representatives.
Bazaar shop-owners feared that the VAT would increase prices and lower demand for their products. The government rejected the criticism and argued the overall tax burden would not increase.
The VAT measure forms part of wider economic reforms planned by Ahmadinejad, who came to power in 2005 pledging to share out Iran's oil wealth more fairly but has come under fire for his failure to rein in steadily climbing double-digit inflation.
The government wants to change Iran's extensive subsidy system to target payments more directly to those in need, but critics say it risks further stoking inflation, now running at 29.4 percent year-on-year.
Iran has reaped windfall oil revenue in recent years but analysts say foreign companies have become more wary of investing in the Middle Eastern country due to increased tension with the West over Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
Iran says its nuclear activities are solely intended to produce electricity, but its refusal to halt sensitive atomic work has drawn three rounds of U.N. sanctions since 2006.
Iran’s traders move to revive power base
Published By FT Times: October 14 2008
The mood in the Tehran baazar on Monday was confused. Some of the grey shutters in the vaulted passageways of the bazaar remained firmly closed, others were open for business while yet more were half open-half closed, perhaps reflecting that many bazaaris – merchants – were in two minds over whether to continue their strike against the government of president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad.
Over the past week merchants in some of the biggest bazaars in Iran have been closed in protest at the imposition of a 3 per cent value added tax. On Sunday Tehran joined the dispute in spite of the fact the government announced late last week that it was to “postpone” imposition of the levy.
But the reaction in Tehran – where traders have demanded the suspension of the tax not just its postponement – has fuelled suspicions that traders are using the issue as an opportunity to remind the regime of the bazaaris’ historical economic and political power and that it could be exerted again.
Still more suspect the bazaari protest is turning into a political battlefield with the opponents of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad, encouraging the strike to bring pressure on him ahead of the presidential election next June.
“You can track political rivalries and see politicians showing muscles in the bazaar,” says one trader.
The bazaaris rendered crucial support to the 1979 revolution. But this strike is the first of its kind against the Islamic regime.
The atmosphere in Tehran’s bazaar, with closed shops, has prompted comparisons with the revolutionary days, with many traders nostalgic for the time when anti-government riots helped topple the Shah and the bazaaris had more economic and political influence than they can muster today.
“We should not be happy with anything less than [the] collapse of [Mr] Ahmadi-Nejad’s government,” says one old trader who argues that the strike should continue.
Many analysts say the bazaaris today largely stand where they were before the revolution in terms of frustration with the government, but the emergence of modern trading companies and shopping malls has reduced their influence.
There is also a new element: many of the modern economic centres are suspected to be affiliated or endorsed by the elite Revolutionary Guards and intelligence services, making rivalry extremely difficult for bazaaris. The bazaaris fear their wealth and power is diminishing and modern trade centres are replacing them, says Mohammad-Reza Behzadian, former head of Tehran chamber of commerce.
The trend is leading to the establishment of a new class of entrepreneurs sweeping power away from traditional traders and ignoring their past contribution.
“The bazaari’s fundamental protest is not against tax. Rather, it is against being ignored,” says Saeed Laylaz, an analyst. “It is weeping like a class worried about extinction.”
Despite a diminishing influence, the geographical concentration of thousands of shops sprawling through hundreds of narrow streets in one district gives the bazaari a unique position and a base of power which is not replicated among other classes.
“It takes probably less than an hour for a few old bazaaris just to walk along the bazaar and ask others to shut the whole bazaar,” says Mr Behzadian.
Although analysts believe the good old days of the bazaari are over and doubt recent protests have the capacity to evolve to a national movement or create any major economic crisis, they warn about its social impact at a time when inflation stands at 29.4 per cent and is growing.
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