TEHRAN-Iran is scheduled to produce 1.35 million of cars by the end of the current calendar year of 1395 (which ends on March 20, 2017), Deputy Minister of Industry, Mining and Trade Mohsen Salehinia announced.

As Salehinia underlined, the government seeks to improve the quality as well as the quantity of the domestically produced cars on the way to boost their exports, the IRIB reported on Wednesday.

“Iran has commenced cooperation with foreign partners in auto sector,” he added, “One of Iranian giant auto-makers has signed joint venture with one of the foreign eminent car-producers and the executive officials of the agreement have been assigned.”

The deputy minister also noted that the cooperatively produced cars will be unveiled and presented to the domestic market in the last two months of the current Iranian Year (February-March, 2017).

Iranian carmakers manufactured 878,644 vehicles in the first 11 months of the past Iranian calendar year of 1394 (March 21, 2015- February 19, 2016).

The automobile industry, the biggest non-oil sector of the Iranian economy, constituting around 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), boomed over the decade ending in 2011 due to government support and the dearth of international competitors in the domestic market. 

Iran ranked 13th in the world sales of passenger cars, hitting the sale of 1,055,400 cars in 2015, according to a recent report of the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers. 

According to the report, the amount of passenger cars sold in Iran in 2015 accounted for 1.59 percent of the world’s total sale.

HJ/MA