With the removal of international sanctions on trade with Iran at the start of this year, Iran has been attracting a great deal of attention from shopping mall and FEC operators, eager to cash in on the country’s 80 million population with disposable income.
Many of the ambitions come from neighbouring UAE where the culture of shopping and entertainment is already well matured. Their problem is that the shopping culture is very much the traditional retail trade, rather than sleek shopping malls. The lack of concentration of population is also a problem for planners assessing the country’s demographics for investment.
While The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates that Iran’s consumer goods market is worth US$95bn and will grow to $166bn over the next four years, 90 per cent of those sales are in local shops as opposed to malls or shopping centres. However, current reports from Iran indicate that the country has 400 shopping malls – 65 of them in the capital, Tehran – under construction. The largest of them, Isfahan City Centre, would be the second largest shopping mall in the Middle East (after the Dubai Mall) when it is finally opened later this year.
There remain in place some restrictions on trading with Iran due to the US Treasury clampdown on financial transactions that have yet to be lifted.
