Suggesting and Prioritizing Policy Solutions for Export Financing Development in Iran

One of the major requirements for increasing the competitiveness among the range of export goods in global markets is to equip financial markets in terms of development and supply of financial resources required to strengthen and foster export activities, given the fact that firms involved in the international trade arena have access to a wide variety of export financing methods which puts them at an advantage over domestic exporters. So failure to acknowledge this issue may give rise to serious constrains in the development and growth of non-petroleum exports. Financing of export activities in the form of financial arrangements, insurance and guarantee, with regards to the level of business and non-business risks is carried out through government institutions in two forms of export financing before and after the shipment of goods. The surveys indicated that, however, there are multiple challenges in structural (based institutional framework), behavioral (export financing function) and environment (out of the firm control) in non-petroleum export finance. Due to the difference in scope of effecting, and the costs of each solution related to these challenges, the main purpose of this article is to offer and prioritize a set of solutions addressing the most important challenges faced by non-petroleum export finance in the mentioned axis. Hence in this study, a questionnaire containing offering policy solutions is arranged and handed out to some 45 policy makers in the Export and Financing domain. After Confirming the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, prioritizing the solutions is conducted through the statistical analysis and the TOPSIS method. As a result, the most important and the most prioritized policy options for non-oil export financing are related to the behavioral factor and include increasing the working capital of export units; increasing the Export Development Bank and Export Guarantee Fund of Iran capital from resources provided by the government; creating and expanding of low-cost export credit lines from the Central Bank to the Export Development Bank of Iran; and cutting commissions on export credits, guarantees and insurance policies.