TEHRAN- Iran has defined 16 development projects in the steel sector which are aimed to boost the country’s output of steel products by 17.3 million tons in a course of five years, IRNA reported.

These projects are for constructing production units each with the capacity of 600,000 tons, while some other projects have been also defined to set up some units with under 500,000-ton capacity that together with the 600,000-ton capacity units will add 19.1 million tons to the country’s annual steel products output, the same report confirmed.

Iran’s Industry, Mining and Trade Minister Reza Rahmani says the country has achieved a proper self-reliance in steel industry.

Steel industry is one of the industries in which some good investment has been made and today it has become a production advantage, according to Rahmani.

Iran’s annual steel production is planned to reach 45 million tons by the Iranian calendar year 1400 (March 2021-March 2022).

The country’s annual crude steel production is planned to rise to 30 million tons in the current Iranian calendar year (ends on March 19, 2020) from 25 million tons in the past year.

According to the World Steel Association (WSA), Iran became the world’s tenth largest steel producer in 2018.

The country which stood at the 13th place in 2017 could lag behind three major steel producers in the world, namely Italy, Taiwan, and Ukraine to stand at the 10th place in 2018, despite the re-imposition of sanctions by the U.S.

According to the WSA’s report, Iran produced 25 million tons of crude steel in 2018 which indicates 17.7 percent growth from 21.2 million tons in 2017.

In last May, Washington imposed new sanctions on Iran's metals and minerals sectors in an attempt to [as the U.S. president Trump put it] “choke off the country’s largest non-petroleum related sources of export revenue".

While at the first glance [considering Trump’s comments], this might seem to be a heavy hit to Iran’s economy in the near future but a close look into the country’s exports data could reveal Trump’s great miscalculations. In fact, this could even be considered a “blessing in disguise” for the country’s minerals and metal industry.

Iranian Deputy Industry, Mining and Trade Minister Jafar Sarqini has said that the ministry has taken necessary measures to maintain the country’s metal exports despite U.S. sanctions.

MA/MA