TEHRAN – A two-day national conference on the future prospects of Iran’s steel and mining industries is being held at the IRIB International Conference Center in Tehran.

As reported by IRIB, during this conference which is attended by senior officials including the Industry, Mining and Trade Minister Reza Rahmani, several key issues in the mentioned industries are being explored and discussed.

The national master plan for steel industry, boosting exports in the face of international and domestic challenges, utilizing domestic capacities, barter trading, reviving small-scale mines, indigenization of equipment and machinery and supporting domestic production in the mentioned industries, promoting innovation and new technologies, as well as the effective communication between industry and academic bodies like universities are among the topics which are being covered in the said conference.

Since the U.S. re-imposed sanctions on Iran to pressure the country’s economy, Iran has been taking all necessary measures to mitigate the impact of the sanctions and counter the U.S. actions.

Improving and boosting domestic production in various sectors has been one of the major strategies that Iran has been following in the past two years in order to increase its independence.

To this end, the Iranian government has put supporting domestic producers atop agenda in the current year.

In this regard, the industry ministry has been pursuing a movement for the promotion of domestic production and defined a plan to reduce the imports in various sectors by $10 billion through domestic production of some products by [Iranian calendar] year 1400 (March 2021-March 2022).

While the U.S. unilateral sanctions on Iran in recent years have upset the Iranian industry in some sectors, the statistics indicate that the minerals sector has not been affected by the sanctions, while it’s been also improved.

The improvement is more noticeable in the steel sector, as according to the World Steel Association (WSA), Iran became the world’s tenth-largest steel producer in 2018.

EF/MA