During a visit to the Bandar Imam Khomeini Special Economic Zone on August 28, Madanizadeh met with port officials and customs managers to assess operational challenges and propose structural reforms. “This meeting aims to identify the root causes of customs and clearance delays and to develop targeted solutions,” he said.
Madanizadeh stressed the importance of empirical analysis, instructing officials to compile one-year statistics detailing the movement of goods from maritime entry to port exit. “We need to understand at which stages goods are most frequently held up, and why,” he noted. “Only then can we design interventions that are both effective and scalable.”
The minister outlined an ambitious goal: to reduce the total customs clearance time to three days. Achieving this, he said, would require coordinated reforms across agencies and a rethinking of the current procedural architecture.
He also pointed to broader inefficiencies in Iran’s foreign trade ecosystem, including fragmented communication between regulatory bodies. “We must rethink how trade-related organizations interact and redesign the underlying processes to reflect modern standards,” Madanizadeh added.