TEHRAN – Iran has announced its readiness to offer innovative investment opportunities and export technological products to the member countries of the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation.

D-8 includes major Muslim developing countries namely, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey.

In order to attract capital for startups, inventions, and technological projects, we are ready to take a step to attract foreign investors, Mohammad Saleh Khaleghi, Iran’s representative in the technology exchange network of the D-8 countries, said.

“We collect export opportunities from national offices and monitor the market in seven other countries, and our effort is to address the issue of technological export to these countries in the simplest way,” he explained, IRNA reported.

Technology advancement

Today, the country's knowledge-based ecosystem accounts for more than 3 percent of GDP. And the figure is projected to reach 5 percent, however, the main goal is to step toward a 10 percent share in GDP, Sattari told Fars on February 13.

The share of knowledge-based companies in the country's economy has exceeded 9 quadrillion rials (about $34 billion), and since 2019, it has experienced a growth of more than 450 percent, he stated.

The knowledge-based ecosystem is a newly-emerged ecosystem but has so far been able to solve many of the country's problems.

The Innovation and Prosperity Fund affiliated with the Vice Presidency of Science and Technology has earmarked a sum of 170 trillion rials (nearly $650 million) to support knowledge-based companies over the past 4 years.

There are currently 6,263 knowledge-based companies operating in the country, offering advanced products and services in various fields of technology to domestic and foreign markets, and some of them have entered international markets, Siavash Maleki, deputy head of the Fund, stated.

The fields of aircraft maintenance, steel, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, oil, and gas are among the sectors that researchers in technology companies have engaged in, leading to import reduction.

FB/MG