TEHRAN (Iran News) –Iran’s 27th National Exports Day ceremony was held at Tehran’s Islamic Summit Conference Hall on Saturday, in which the country’s exemplary exporting companies were honored, IRIB reported.

Organized by the Trade Promotion Organization (TPO), the ceremony was attended by high-ranking officials including Industry, Mining and Trade Minister Abbas Ali-Abadi, Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Diplomacy Mehdi Safari, and TPO Head Mehdi Zeyghami.

As reported, the process of registration and evaluation of the top exporters started a few months ago, and one part of this evaluation included self-declaration and another part was based on the statistics regarding the companies’ export performance.

Speaking at the ceremony, Industry, Mining and Trade Minister Abbas Ali-Abadi mentioned the ministry’s efforts for expanding the country’s trade, noting that since the beginning of the current government incumbency, the ministry has taken several positive measures for boosting the country’s economic relations with its trade partners.

As an example, he mentioned the establishment of a barter trade mechanism with Belarus, an achievement which was made during his recent visit to the country.

Further in the ceremony, Zeyghami in his speech mentioned the significant increase in the country’s non-oil trade in the previous Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20), saying: “Last year, the country’s non-oil exports reached more than 53 billion dollars, which was a new record in the history of the country.”

“In the first six months of this year, although the value of some products, including petrochemicals, decreased, we have had a 29 percent increase in exports in terms of weight. Also, during this period, we had export growth in the fields of industry, mining and agriculture, and the total non-oil export in the first half of this year was more than 24 billion dollars,” Zeyghami added.

Elsewhere in the event, Safari pointed to the Industry, Mining and Trade Ministry’s measures for expanding economic ties with new trade partners, saying: “The policy of the 13th government is to develop trade with neighboring countries, the African continent, Latin America and East Asia.”