More than 88,000 tons of commodities worth $27 billion has been exported from Iran in the past eight months, the customs office said in a statement carried by Fars News Agency.

China, Iraq, the UAE, Turkey, and Afghanistan have been the first five destinations of Iran’s non-oil goods.

The increase comes as Iran’s oil sales have been subject to US sanctions since last year as President Donald Trump pulled out of a multilateral nuclear deal with Iran and reinstated tough sanctions on the country including its banking system.

Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, the vice president and head of Plan and Budget Organization, said in November that Iran aims to accomplish an objective of increasing non-oil exports to 15 neighboring countries by twofold to counter the US sanctions on its oil sales.

Nobakht said that Iran’s non-oil exports to 15 neighboring and near countries should reach $48 billion in the next Iranian calendar year (starting March 20, 2020), adding that hitting the target was necessary given Iran’s urgent need for foreign currency revenues as normal crude sales have been affected by American sanctions.

He said that Iran had been effectively deprived of around $50 billion a year in oil sales income, adding that non-oil exports should compensate for that loss.

“Based on the target, we must bring non-oil exports to $48 billion, from the $24 billion that we currently have,” he said, adding that setting the target had been agreed earlier in the day in a meeting involving high-ranking government officials.