TEHRAN- Products valued at $1.746 million were exported from Kohgiluyeh-Boyer Ahmad province, in the southwest of Iran, during the first quarter of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-June 21), a provincial official announced.

Amir-Teymour Mousavian, the deputy head of the province’s Industry, Mining and Trade Department for commercial affairs and trade promotion, put the weight of exported products at 52 tons.

He named cement, licorice powder and extract, and hygienic and cosmetic products as the main exported items.

He said that export from the province fell 24 percent in terms of value and 62 percent in terms of weight in the first quarter of this year, from that of the previous year.

As previously announced by the official, products valued at $8.8 million were exported from Kohgiluyeh-Boyer Ahmad province during the past Iranian calendar year 1400 (ended on March 20).

Mousavian put the weight of exported products at 362,000 tons.

He named Armenia, Switzerland, Iraq and Afghanistan as the major destinations of the exported commodities.

Saying that the annual export from the province shows growth both in the value and weight, the official said that 292,000 tons of products worth $8.2 million had been exported in 1399.

As announced by the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA), the value of Iran’s non-oil exports reached $13.69 billion in the first three months of the current Iranian calendar year, up 21 percent compared to the last year’s same period.

Alireza Moghadasi said Iran exported 27.7 million tons of non-oil commodities in the mentioned three months.

Meanwhile, some 8.154 million tons of goods valued at $12.464 billion were imported into the country in the said period to register an 18-percent rise in terms of value compared to the last year’s same quarter.

In total, the Islamic Republic traded about 36 million tons of non-oil goods worth $25.5 billion with its trade partners in the first quarter of the current Iranian calendar year, up 19.5 percent in terms of value, Moghadasi said.

According to the official, the country’s trade balance was $605 million positive in the mentioned time span.

Iran's top export destination during this period was China with $4.214 billion worth of imports from the Islamic Republic, followed by Iraq with $1.824 billion, Turkey with $1.737 billion, the United Arab Emirates with over $1.645 billion, and India with $424 million.

Meanwhile, the country’s top five sources of imports during these three months were the UAE with $3.426 billion, China with $3.131 billion, Turkey with $1.273 billion, India with $512 million, and Germany with $456 million worth of imports.

MA/MA