Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 5
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iran seeks to form an international consortium to find new markets for its iron ore, to eliminate China's dominant share of the Islamic Republic's iron ore exports.
Alireza Siasi, the secretary of Iran's Iron Ore Producers and Exporters Association said the country should establish a competitive market and export iron ore to countries other than China, the Islamic Republic's ISNA news agency reported Nov. 5.
"Some decisions are forecastto be made on the issue before 2015," he added.
In recent years China has imported 2.5 percent of its iron ore demands from Iran, over 90 percent of Iran's total iron ore exports.
Iranian officials forecast that Iran's share from China's market will be fall under 0.5 percent till 2018, while share of other iron ore exporters including Australia, Brazil and South Africa is soaring gradually.
Concerned of loosing the China's iron ore market Iranians negotiate with other countries to secure their iron ore exports.
Earlier in October, the vice-president of the Iran's Iron Ore Producers and Exporters Association, Bahram Shakouri said that Iran has given more attention to the Chinese market, and neglected neighboring countries' markets.
"We should not forget that our neighboring countries are seriously in need of Iranian iron or," he said.
He said that the countries such as Turkmenistan, Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Pakistan can also use Iran's iron ore.
Shakouri also touched Iran's cheap price for iron ore saying "the Islamic Republic's iron ore price difference with Indian and Australian iron ore prices are $10 and $20 per metric ton respectively, which are not logical."
Iran's iron ore exports witnessed significant fall during the recent months. Tehran exported 7.75 million metric tons of iron ore, worth $510 million during the 7-month period from March 21 to Oct. 22, which indicates a fall by 34.84 percent in terms of volume and a decline by 31.23 in terms of value respectively compared to the same period of preceding year (Iran's fiscal year starts on March 21).
The Islamic Republic exported around 20 million metric tons of iron ore in the previous Iranian fiscal year, which ended March 20.
Iran's iron ore resources stand at 5.1 billion metric tons, of which 2.8 billion metric tons are proven.
During March 2013-14, the country extracted 33.6 million metric tons of iron ore.