TEHRAN: Iran’s Ministry of Industry has announced that Iranian mineral products and industries accounted for 16.5 percent of the country’s non-oil exports last year. In the previous Iranian calendar year (ended March 19), the export volume for the mining and mineral industry sector of Iran surpassed seven billion dollars with steel chain having the largest share (38%). Meanwhile, cement enjoyed a total of 10.4 percent of the total exports followed by iron ore (7.4%), copper and its downstream products (4.1%), aluminum (3.2%) as well as zinc and lead (3.1%).
During the same time period, foreign trade value of the mining industries sector reached 11.4 billion dollars of which 4.4 billion dollars belonged to the imports in the sector. Steel chain took 68 percent of the imports in mineral products and exports followed by cement (7.7%), iron ore (2.9%), copper (2.7%) as well as aluminum (nearly 2%).
Of the 10 countries which imported Iran’s mineral products and industries in the previous year, Iraq (18%), China (15%) and India (14%) accounted for the largest shares, respectively. On the other hand, among the 10 countries which deployed their mineral products to Iran, it was China which ranked first by enjoying 33% of the share followed by the UAE (19%) and South Korea (14%).
