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A glance at Iran's industrial indexes

Business Materials 9 February 2016 12:48 (UTC +04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 9

By Dalga Khatinoglu - Trend:

Iran's industrial GDP growth experienced a 11.94 percent contraction during 9 months of the current fiscal year (started on March 21, 2015), said the head of Tehran Chamber of Commerce Masoud Khansari.

Khansari noted that the index of Industrial production has shown negative figures in all spheres, except for pharmaceutical and food industries.

The growth of industrial production index during the fall was 24.8 percent, compared to last year, he said.

The share of industry in Iran's overall GDP was 11.83 percent during last year, the Statistical Center of Iran reported. The center put Iran's GDP growth at 1 percent in the first half of the fiscal year.

However, the International Monetary Fund estimated that the figure would stand between -0.5 percent and +0.5 percent in the current fiscal year. Meanwhile, the World Bank seems to be more optimistic, putting the figure at 1.9 percent during a period from March 2015-March 2016.

On the other hand, the Central Bank of Iran put the industrial GDP growth at 5 percent for last year and -2.9 percent in the preceding year.

After the West imposed tighter sanctions on Iran in 2012, the Islamic Republic's GDP fell from above $590 billion in 2011 to about $425 billion in 2014, according to the World Bank.

The real GDP growth is projected to reach 4-5.5 percent in 2016-17 and to average 4 percent throughout the medium term, International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated.

Groups

Exports ($, M)

Change Y/Y

Gas condensate

5801

-54%

Industry (including petrochemicals)

25118

3.40%

Carpets and handicrafts

292

-10%

Agriculture

3608

-7%

Mine

795

-39%

Coming to industrial exports, according to the latest statistics, released by the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran, the country's total industrial exports (includes petrochemicals inside the industrial export group) at $25.118 billion, remained unchanged in volume, but increased by 3.4 percent in value during 10 months of the current fiscal year.

However, the weight of petrochemicals in Iran's total industrial exports are very high. For instance, the share of gas condensate and petrochemicals in Iran's total non-oil export is always around 46-49 percent.

Shana reported on Jan.17 that some 48 percent of total export revenues among top 500 Iranian companies in the past fiscal year (March 2014-March 2015) accounted for petrochemical companies, followed by oil product exporters and industrial exporters, with 12 percent and 10 percent shares respectively.

Dalga Khatinoglu is an expert on Iran's energy sector and head of Trend Agency'sIran news service

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