Tehran, February 18: Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Shamseddin Hosseini says the volume of Iran’s non- oil exports has reached 26 billion dollars in the past ten months.
The minister explained that the volume was about 4 billion dollars ten years ago and it climbed to about 7 billion dollars five years ago, IRNA reported on Friday.
“At the end of the last [Iranian] year, the figure passed 26 billion dollars and in the last 10 months of this year, we exported 26 billion dollars,” Hosseini said.
“The potential of Iran’s economy makes the growing measure possible to continue rapidly,” he added.
The official noted that Iran could boost the volume of its non-oil exports following the model of neighboring Turkey, which exports 100 billion dollars worth of non-oil goods annually.
Boosting non-oil exports is the top priority of the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to the minister.
Iran is the third-largest country in the Middle East and Central Asia in terms of exports and imports, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported.
The IMF said in its latest report titled ‘Regional Economic Outlook: Middle East and Central Asia’ that Iran’s exports of goods and services in 2010 would amount to 95 billion dollars.
——–Agencies