TEHRAN- In a press conference on Saturday, Ali-Akbar Safaei, the head of Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization (PMO), underlined the significant growth of transit of commodities via the ports of country and said that transit via some ports has risen by 150-170 percent in this year.

During the conference, which was on the occasion of World Maritime Day, the official said that the PMO has held many sessions with the neighboring countries as well as India and took many follow-up measures to facilitate trade with those countries which has also led to the rising trend of transit via Iran.

According to a report released during the press conference, the loading and unloading of goods in the ports of the country has risen 4.8 percent during the first half of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-September 22), as compared to the same period of time in the past year.

Based on the mentioned report, 109.733 million tons of goods were loaded and unloaded in the ports of Iran during the first half of this year, while the figure was 104.698 million tons in the first half of the previous year.

As reported, loading and unloading of non-oil products stood at 54.777 million tons in the six-month of this year, up 0.8 percent from 54.366 million tons in the same time span of the previous year.

In terms of oil products, this year’s figure was 54.955 million tons, rising 9.2 percent from 50.331 million tons in the past year.

For the container sector, a growth of 8.2 percent was achieved, as 1.273 million TEUs were loaded and unloaded in the first half of this year, while the figure was 1.176 million TEUs in the first half of the past year.

Infrastructure development being highly paid attention

Elsewhere in his remarks, the PMO head said that his organization is paying serious attention to the development of infrastructure in the ports as well as the development of human resources.

“We have defined projects worth 69 trillion rials (about $250 million) from the PMO’s budget for the establishment of proper infrastructure in the ports which will worth 100 trillion rials (about $350 million)”, the official stated.

He also announced that 33.5 trillion rials (about $120 million) of investment has been attracted since the year start.

Safaei also mentioned the PMO’s supporting the knowledge-based companies and said that these companies have managed to achieve the technical knowledge for the domestic manufacturing of 768 types of marine and port equipment.

Among the outstanding measures recently taken by the PMO, the head of organization also referred to launching a liner between the ports of Iran, Kazakhstan and Russia for the first time and said that 20 vessels are operating in this line.

PMO’s major measures in line with World Maritime Day’s motto 

The head of Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization further referred to the motto of this year’s World Maritime Day, which is New Technologies for Greener Shipping, and mentioned three major actions of his organization in line with this motto as:

- Preserving the environment through producing low-sulfur fuel

- Instruction for scrapping the vessels

- Using new energies such as wind and wave

He also referred to the active presence of Iran in the sessions of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and said that the representatives of our country have always played effective roles in the decisions made in these meetings.

Addressing the same press conference, which was also attended by the PMO deputies, Jalili Eslami, the deputy for ports affairs, put the current capacity of the country’s ports at over 270 million tons and said that the figure is planned to reach about 300 million tons by the Iranian calendar year 1404 (begins in March 2025).

While Iran is combating the U.S. unilateral sanctions on its economy, the country’s ports as the major gates of exports and imports play a significant role in this battle. This role makes all-out support to ports and more development of them serious and vital.

Such necessity has led the government to define projects for more development of the ports and also take some measures to encourage investment making in ports, in addition to facilitating loading and unloading of goods, especially basic commodities, there.