TEHRAN -- Iran signed $642 million worth of technical and engineering deals in the first four months of the current calendar year (ended July 22), the deputy commerce minister said here on Monday.

IRNA News Agency quoted Babak Afqahi as saying that the figure showed a 30 percent increase in comparison to the same period in preceding year.
Afqahi, also the head of the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran, named China as the biggest trading partner of Iran in the mentioned period with $3.1 billion worth of imports, accounting for 17 percent of Iran’s total exports.
According to Mohammad-Hassan Mahdipour, an official with the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran, the country plans to reach the figure of $3.3 billion by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2011).
Iran exported $3,175 million worth of technical and engineering services in the previous Iranian calendar year (ended March 20).
In the previous Iranian calendar year 58 contracts have been signed with 21 countries around the world such as Turkmenistan, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Kazakhstan, and Lebanon