Iran's Steel Exports Rise By Over 38 Percent In Last Ten Months

The export of finished and semi-finished steel products in Iran has increased by 38.27 percent between March 2019 and January 2020 despite the package of sanctions imposed by the United States.

“Over 8.8 million tons of finished and semi-finished steel products were exported from Iran in the last 10 months [March 2019-January 2020], and 66 percent of them were semi-finished steel,” IRNA cited the Iranian Steel Producers Association's report as saying on February 24.

In another report, IRNA said on Wednesday that Iran has produced 2,895,000 tons of crude steel in January 2020 that shows a 46.7 percent growth compared to its previous year’s production in the same month which was 1,971,000 tons. This figure is 20 times more than the world average of 2.1 percent.

Iran produced 31.9 million tons of steel in 2019. This figure is 30 percent more compared to its previous year’s nearly 24 million tons. Meanwhile, Global crude steel production stood at 1.848 billion tons in 2019. China, India, Japan, the U.S., and Russia are respectively the biggest steel producers in the world.

In May 2019, the U.S. imposed new sanctions on Iran's metals and minerals sectors in an attempt to “choke off the country’s largest non-petroleum related sources of export revenue.”

When the U.S. President Donald Trump announced the new sanctions on Iran’s metals and minerals, he said these new sanctions are aimed to cut off about 10 percent of the country’s total revenues.

Iran sold nearly $50 billion worth of oil between March 2018 and March 2019, while the total non-oil exports stood at about $44 billion, so in total Iran’s export revenues stood at about $94 billion in the past fiscal year.

Meanwhile, the value of exports from iron, iron ore and steel sectors stood at about $4 billion while the value of copper chain exports hardly touched $1 billion, so despite the great production levels, the value of metals and mineral that Iran exports hardly accounts for 5 percent of the country’s total exports revenues, according to Tehran Times.

“We have established a special working group in the ministry which is closely assessing the situation and making necessary arrangements to mitigate the impact of the U.S. sanctions,” Jafar Sarqini, an Iranian deputy industry, mining and trade minister said in June 2019, adding that the country achieved a proper self-reliance in steel industry.

Iran’s annual steel production is planned to reach 45 million tons in the next Iranian calendar year, which lasts between March 2021 and March 2022.