TEHRAN- Iran’s major steel producers exported 5.884 million tons of steel during the first ten months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2019-January 20, 2020), which was 25 percent higher than the figure of the same period of time in the past year, IRNA reported on Friday.

Also as reported, exports made by the major producers rose 93 percent to hit 674,873 tons during the tenth Iranian calendar month of Dey (December 22, 2019-January 20, 2020).

Iran has defined 16 development projects in the steel sector which are aimed to boost the country’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