Iran: race to business

Carlo Gorla –

Last summer the signature of the agreement about the nuclear Iranian programme and the consequent revocation, in January, of the sanctions that had lasted for almost ten years, puts an end to the isolation of Iran from the international community, which actually had lasted for forty years, since the Khomeini revolution.Iran

Therefore a new phase starts, both political, which will see Iran to play a new role in the delicate Middle East context, and economic, with relevant repercussions on the entire world panorama.

Starting from the consequences on financial centres, not fully positive, at least in the short-term, due to the rise of the oil offer on international markets without forgetting, anyway, those considered by everybody with interest, that is to say the opening of a market that is eager of products and technologies.

The prospects for our economic field seem rosy, too, considering that analysts indicate Instrumental Mechanics, and especially machine tools, textile machinery and stone working machines, as ranking first in a list that includes Oil & Gas and transports as well. They are sectors with a strong bent for export, highly competitive and especially, abundantly making use of transmission gears, gears and machine members in general.

It is not simple to process specific and detailed forecasts, considering that the actual developments will depend also on the economic agreements that will be signed by big industrial groups, like for instance those regarding the air transport, involving Airbus, in a market that, closed for forty years to the purchase of Western vehicles, has announced the need of buying 400 new aircrafts, or the railway transport for which we might propose similar reasoning. Highly appealing also the automotive, where old alliances and/or joint ventures already in course will be consolidated, without anyway excluding new ones, due to the need of supplying a market oriented to a yearly target of 2 million vehicles, both to replace the circulating fleet of about 14 million cars, nowadays obsolete, and also to satisfy the foreseeable new demands of a Country with 78 million inhabitants in fast economic development. Finally yet importantly, the Oil & Gas, which will certainly benefit from the new boost, both in quantitative and technological terms, of the mining activity.

In general, analysts foresee a rise of the Italian export by around 3 billion Euros in the next four years, in which, as we all hope, also gear, transmissions, mechatronics and drive industries will share significantly.