TEHRAN- Imam Khomeini Port is a seaport at the northwestern end of the Persian Gulf near Ahvaz, the center of Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province.

It is Iran’s second-largest operating port after Shahid Rajaee Port in southern Hormozgan province.

The port was opened in 1960 with two berths, today it offers 40 berths for ships.

Regarding its importance in Iran’s trade, the development of Imam Khomeini Port has been always attached importance by the governments.

A number of development and investment making projects are currently underway at this port.

As announced by the managing director of Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization (PMO), these projects enjoy some proper progress.

Making the remarks on the sidelines of a recent visit to the port, Mohammad Rastad put the fund allocated to these projects at 1.4 trillion rials (about $33.33 million) and said that most of the projects have progress of over 50 percent for the moment.

Rastad also announced that based on the schedule, most of the projects at Imam Khomeini Port are expected to be completed by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2021) and the rest by the end of the first quarter of the next year (June 21, 2021).

Meanwhile, the private sector has made some proper investment in the development projects of the port and the projects enjoy good progress at the moment.

The private sector’s investment has been mainly for the construction of commodity warehouses, and also in production activities.

As previously reported, the loading of basic goods at Imam Khomeini Port has risen 24 percent during the first quarter of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20-June 20), compared to the same period of time in the past year.

Over four million tons of basic commodities have loaded at the port and transported to different parts of the country in the three-month period.

Wheat, barley, soybean cake, sugar, rice, and edible oil were the major products loaded at Imam Khomeini Port during the first quarter of this year.

Over 15.7 million tons of basic commodities were loaded and unloaded at Imam Khomeini Port in the past Iranian calendar year (ended on March 19).

Among the underway projects with good progress at this port, it could be referred to the project for the construction of a vessel traffic control tower with 600 billion rials (about $14.2 million) of credit.

While the underway projects have a good status at the moment, the infrastructure at the port requires to be improved and some overhaul operations are also needed, for example in docks 27 to 34 of the port.