TEHRAN- Iran’s major steel companies produced over 18.5 million tons of steel ingots during the 11-month period from March 21, 2019 to February 19, 2020, registering a four-percent growth from the figure for the same period in the previous year, IRNA reported on Saturday.

These producers’ output although fell three percent to 1.493 million tons during the eleventh Iranian calendar month of Bahman (January 21-Februaray 19), the same report confirmed.

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.

In its latest report, the World Steel Association (WSA) has 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