Slow start for SenIran

The Wall Street Journal today says the joint Senegal-Iran auto venture, SenIran, has fallen far short of it production goals. Last year Dakar decreed the phase out the 25,000-or-so colorful taxi/buses that have been one of Dakar's best known international symbols. They were to be replaced by the shiny new cabs produced by the joint Iranian factory. In today's front-page Journal article, plans to have 2,000 of the SenIran cabs resulted in only 500 on the street... And the $75 millon Theis SenIran factory that opened last year has only produced 20 of the 10,000 cars it had planned to produce this year... Parts, labor and construction delays (the usual) caused the problems according to the Journal's report, which states that sources acknowledge the venture, one of others around the world, has other goals besides profit... The article also mentions that it was Iranians who ran the power lines to Touba recently, including probably those who I met during my Spring, 2008 visit to the Holy City.