TEHRAN- Iranian Industry, Mining and Trade Minister Reza Rahmani announced that industry and mining sectors of the country have experienced a growth of 18 percent during the first half of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-September 22) compared to the same period of time in the past year, IRNA reported on Saturday.

Making the remarks during a ceremony to inaugurate a copper concentrate plant in the northeastern city of Ahar, the minister said that the country has witnessed a growth of 6.5 percent in crude steel output, 9.1 percent rise in production of steel products, six percent increase in cement output, and 13 percent rise in glass production during the first six-month of this year.

He also announced that copper production has risen 18 percent in the country in the first half of the present year.

Exploration and extraction projects in mines is one of the prioritized plans of the ministry and 5 trillion rials (about $119 million) of budget has been allocated to discovery projects in copper mines of the country in the current year, Rahmani further stated.

As previously announced by Ardeshir Sa’d-Mohammadi, the managing director of National Copper Company, projects have been already started for increasing the country’s annual production of copper concentrate by 450,000 tons.

Production of copper concentrate in Iran during the past Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20, 2019), was five percent more than the planned figure, according to the data released by Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organization (IMIDRO).

IMIDRO data put the country’s copper concentrate output at 1.18 million tons in the past year, which is 1.123 million tons more than the planned amount.

The data also indicate that production of copper cathode and anode in Iran exceeded the planned amount in the past year.

National Copper Company produced 247,300 tons of copper cathode and 313,700 tons of copper anode in the previous year, showing 15 percent and 21 percent rise, respectively, from the projected figures.

MA/MA