Restrictions and legal challenges for foreign investment in the media market in Iran

Abstract

As economic sanctions against Iran started lifting up or easing, several major international investors moved to Iran, and others may follow. After lifting up the economic sanctions, Swedish and Russian businessmen team up to invest in Iranian digital markets. In recent years, some companies in Iran, like Café Bazaar, Iran’s main Android marketplace, and Digikala, could increase their assets from $150 million to $4 billion in just about 4 years. How this would happen in Iran? What has been changed in recent years in Iran? What would the ‘open for investment’ policy means in the context of the Iran media market? The methodology of this paper is based on the relevant Global Competitiveness Index (GCI)’s pillars (The 12 pillars of competitiveness are institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labor market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication, and innovation. World Economic Forum, The Global Competitiveness Report, 2016–2017, Geneva, 2016, ISBN-13: 978-1-944835-04-0.) of competitiveness (2015–2016), taking into account recent economic developments in Iran (up until 2017) especially as a result of the lifting up of the sanctions against Iran, including legal reforms to facilitate foreign investment, creating businesses, a digital platform and an organization for import and export procedures, structural changes to improve and development of private sector, and great amendments to taxation legislation for foreign investment. In this paper we will illuminate some basic facts and features of the Iran’s economy and opportunities which have been ignored by some reports. We will discover that foreign investors in Iran enjoy the same supports and privileges that are offered to the Iranian investors. In this connection, the Direct Taxation Law rules that no discrimination must be applied in terms of taxation as regards foreign and domestic investors. In this regard, similar to Iranian investors foreign investors pay the equal amount of taxes. In the same way, tax exemptions and discounts have, further, been established equally for both foreign and domestic investors. Also we ascertain that there are four basic freedoms including assets and many other privileges and methods to invest in Iran especially in social media. By means of giving some examples of recent developments we show that the situation is very perfect, especially in terms of market size, to invest in social media in Iran. However, it should be kept in mind that, similar to many countries, a variety of legal arrangements govern different business activities in Iran, some of them are specifically related to media and some of the are general, and indirectly are concerned with this area of activity.