TEHRAN- Iran’s export of steel ingots and steel products has increased 46 percent during the first nine months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-December 21, 2019), IRNA reported on Monday citing the data released by the Association of Iranian Steel Producers.

The released data put the country’s export of steel ingots and steel products at 7.797 million tons during the nine-month period.

As reported, steel ingot export has risen 38 percent to 5.069 million tons in the nine-month period of this year, from 3.675 million tons in the same time span of the past year.

And the steel products export registered a 27-percent rise to 2.828 million tons in this year from 2.148 million tons in the previous year’s nine-month period.

As previously reported, production of steel ingot rose four percent in Iran during the first nine months of the current Iranian calendar year from the same period of time in the previous year.

Some 15.398 million tons of steel ingots were reportedly produced during the nine-month period of the present year.

Also, production of steel products in the country has increased six percent to stand at 10.141 million tons in the first nine months of this year.

According to the Iranian deputy industry, mining, and trade minister, the country’s steel products output is going to reach 28 million tons by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 19, 2020).

Jafar Sarqini has also announced that the Industry Ministry is planning to increase the exports of steel products to 12 million tons by the end of the year.

The value of the exports of such commodities is expected to reach $9 billion by yearend, the official has said.

The country has also defined 16 development projects in the steel sector which are aimed to boost Iran’s output of steel products by 17.3 million tons in a course of five years.

These projects are for constructing production units each with the capacity of 600,000 tons, while some other projects have been also defined to set up some units with under 500,000-ton capacity that together with the 600,000-ton capacity units will add 19.1 million tons to the country’s annual steel products output.

Iran’s Industry, Mining and Trade Minister Reza Rahmani says the country has achieved a proper self-reliance in steel industry.

Steel industry is one of the industries in which some good investment has been made and today it has become a production advantage, according to Rahmani.

Iran’s annual steel production is planned to reach 45 million tons by the Iranian calendar year 1400 (March 2021-March 2022).

The country’s annual crude steel production is planned to rise to 30 million tons in the current Iranian calendar year (ends on March 19, 2020) from 25 million tons in the past year.

Last month, the World Steel Association (WSA) announced that Iran’s crude steel production increased by 30 percent in 2019 while the average global growth in this sector stood at 3.5 percent.

Based on the WSA report, Iran produced 31.9 million tons of the mentioned commodity during 2019 compared to the last year’s nearly 24 million tons.

MA/MA