TEHRAN- 976,836 cars were manufactured in Iran in the past Iranian calendar year (which ended on March 19), a 13.7 percent fall from the past year, the Fars news agency reported on Sunday.

It is while the country’s car production had rose 53.4 percent in the previous calendar year compared to its preceding year.

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

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 April 6.

“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.

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.

MA