After a great struggle, in the end the Mehr Finance and Credit Institution, associated with the Revolutionary Guards, has successfully assumed ownership of the Kurdistan Tractor Manufacturing Company despite fierce resistance from the Company’s managers. It has notified the company’s current president that he may soon “submit his resignation,” and this is desired despite strong opposition from the aforementioned company’s president as well as authorities in the Kurdistan (provincial) government.
Since early 2010, the Revolutionary Guards planned to buy the Kurdistan Tractor Manufacturing Company, which is one of many companies in Iran’s tractor industry, but the company’s managers delayed the Revolutionary Guards’ efforts. However, in late June, the Mehr Finance and Credit Institution, which is associated with the Revolutionary Guards, proceeded to buy the company and put the company’s current president under heavy pressure to quickly resign or seek a huge loan from the Institution, but this request had also not been accepted. This insistence coming from the authorities of the Mehr Institution for the president of the Kurdistan Tractor Manufacturing Company to resign also had other dimensions, and it intensified to the point where, in his resistance to resign or seek a loan, the Company’s president said that he would not leave his responsibility unless he was dismissed.
One source from the Kurdistan provincial government meanwhile revealed that the conflict over the sale of the Kurdistan Tractor Manufacturing Company escalated such that the Governor, in order to thwart the Revolutionary Guard’s efforts, personally traveled to Tehran to inform the authorities in the government’s cabinet and relevant ministries, though his efforts had yielded no results by July. The current president of the Kurdistan Tractor Manufacturing Company was a local manager who, in trying to boost production, made great strides in improving the company’s factory, increasing profitability, and employing local workers—but the reality of pressure from the Revolutionary Guards led to the president’s replacement by a Revolutionary Guard general named Davood Amrahnejad who until now has not made any contribution and has left the company in a more problematic situation than it was in before. It is noteworthy to mention that the Kurdistan Tractor Production Company is the biggest and only manufacturing company in west Iran, comprised of 160 personnel and workers.
At the beginning of 2010, the Mehr Finance and Credit Institution assumed ownership of the Tabriz Tractor Manufacturing Company for a sum of 177 billion tomans, despite severe opposition from that Company’s managers and East Azerbaijan’s representatives in the Majlis. Mehr had also urged the president of the Tabriz Company to resign and brought about many changes at the factory level of management. And now also one of the Revolutionary generals by the name of A. Hanafi has been appointed as president in a manner similar to the replacement of the Kurdistan Tractor Manufacturing Company’s president.