TEHRAN (Iran News) –A senior Iranian trade official says the country is expected to meet a non-oil exports revenue target of $55 billion in the calendar year to March 2023.
Alireza Peymanpak, who serves as head of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization, said that engineering services exports would account for nearly 10% of Iran’s total exports over the next calendar year.
Peymanpak said that Iran plans to increase shipments to countries in Southeast Asia and Africa to meet the target.
Figures by the Iranian customs office (IRICA) shows that Iranian exports topped $45 billion in the 11 months to late February, an increase of nearly 40% from the similar period over 2020-2021.
Engineering services exports accounted for a bulk of the growth reported in Iran’s non-oil exports over the period with IRICA figures suggesting that earnings from those services had nearly quadrupled year on year.
The export target set for next calendar year would be an increase of 14.5% from figures projected for the year to March 2022.
Peymanpak said that Iran will dispatch more commercial attaches to its embassies around the world to boost exports. He said the number of those attaches will more than triple next calendar year to cover 30 missions.
Iran has reported increased activity in non-oil trade sector since the United States imposed sanctions on the country’s crude sales in 2018.
Meanwhile according to reports, petrochemicals have accounted for a bulk of Iranian exports in recent years thanks to a major boom reported in the sector because of government’s expansion strategies.
Iran has also benefitted from increased shipments of minerals to East Asia while food exports to neighbors have increased consistently since 2019.
Iran’s crude oil exports rose to above 1 million barrels per day (bpd) at the start of this year and continued to remain above that level over January and February, shows a new report citing data by tanker tracker services.
The Tuesday report by Reuters news agency said that Iran’s oil sales to China reached record levels of above 700,000 bpd in January as independent refiners in the East Asian country increased their purchases to both enjoy discounts offered by Iran and to comply with China’s internal regulations.
The report said China’s oil imports from Iran had exceeded levels seen before the United States imposed sanctions on Iran in 2018 when Washington decided to pull out of an international deal on Tehran’s nuclear program.
However, figures by a single tanker tracker service cited in the report showed that Chinese purchases of Iranian oil had amounted to 780,000 bpd in November-December on average.
The major increase in Iranian oil exports comes despite relentless efforts by the US in recent years to hurt Iran’s economy through sanctions targeting the country’s massive energy sector.
The report by Reuters said that Iran’s oil sales to private buyers in China had generated more than $20 billion in revenue over the past two years.
It said that Iran is unlikely to stop supplying oil to those buyers even after it reaches an agreement with world powers to revive the nuclear deal.
Talks on saving the deal have intensified in recent weeks in Vienna where Iranian and American diplomats have been holding indirect negotiations.
