Saying goodbye to paper permits

The deadline for converting paper permits to unique ID has been extended until 14th May , and after this date government systems will not accept paper permits.

According to Iran digital economy annotation, despite the fact that paper licenses should have been removed by the end of 2023, this opportunity has been extended until May 14, 2024, and if businesses want to use government services, they have two weeks to convert paper licenses into unique IDs.

According to the latest statistics published in the national license portal, more than one million and 680 thousand unique IDs have been issued and until 27th April, approximately 478 thousand and 919 paper licenses have been converted into electronic licenses. Seyyed Amir Sayyah, head of the National Center for Studies, Monitoring and Improvement of the Business Environment, said about the number of remaining licenses that should be converted into a unique identifier: Because these are paper licenses that have been issued over decades, now there is an almost accurate estimate of They don’t exist, but we can have guesses about it, and based on these guesses, we will do our best to finish this project by the 14th.

Sayyah announced that with paper permits becoming a unique identifier, economic operators can get services from all government systems in absentia. Regarding the suspension of government facilities for businesses that do not have a unique ID, he said: It is not that services and facilities will be suddenly cut off from tomorrow, but from 15th May, government systems will not accept paper permits. Businesses can receive a unique ID as often as they want. At one point, that service may not require a unique ID and you can continue with a paper license, but gradually, a unique ID will be needed to receive all services.

Earlier, Seyyed Ehsan Khandouzi, the Minister of Economy, had announced the implementation of all the components of the law to facilitate the issuance of business licenses, except for the stage of “converting paper licenses to electronic licenses” and said: 1 million and 400 thousand economic operators will obtain their economic activity licenses. They have received business licenses through the national portal, without visiting in person.

According to the statistics provided by the country’s national license portal, Tehran, Khorasan Razavi and Gilan have removed the most number of paper licenses among the provinces, and the highest percentage of conversion of paper license to unique ID was in Lorestan province.

Seyyed Amir Sayyah believes that the shortage and high cost of information technology specialists, the hacking of some government portals last year, and the resistance of some executives in clarifying the conditions and process of issuing their licenses, have delayed the implementation of this law.

He has also published an article about the different stages of this law and the extent of its implementation. According to Sayyah, the first phase of the implementation of the law on facilitating the issuance of permits began in December 2021, and its purpose was to clarify the conditions for issuing permits for all people, and by February 2022, 90% of it was completed.

The second stage of this law was to make the conditions for registration of applications and issuance of all licenses offline, and from February 2021 to February one year later, 90% of this stage has been completed.

The third stage was the removal of difficult licensing conditions, which was carried out from October 2022 to July 2023 under the title of “cleansing project”, in which 1160 ambiguous, unnecessary or difficult conditions were removed.