Azerbaijan, Baku, Aug.20/ Trend F.Milad/
Iran plans to establish a dam each month by the end of the fifth five-year development plan (March 2016), said the managing director of Iran Water Sources Management Company.
The Mehr News Agency quoted Mohammad Haj-Rasouliha as saying that 60 dams will be built totally during the five-year plan.
Iran has built 17 dams during the past one and a half years, Haj-Rasouliha said on August 10.
"According to the fifth five-year development plan which started in March 2011, one dam should be built each month," the IRNA News Agency quoted him as saying.
Some 36 billion rials (around $3 billion) has been allocated for dam building, he noted.
Some three billion cubic meters of surface water in Iran are being contained behind dams, Energy Minister Majid Namjou said in June.
He told the IRNA News Agency that 75-80 per cent of surface rainwater is poured into the dams.
Iran ranks first in the region and third in world in terms of the dam construction industry, First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi announced last year.
He added that currently contractors are building 135 new dams across the country and also doing several projects in other countries.
In July 2011, Iran celebrated self-sufficiency in dam construction by inaugurating the Karun-4 dam, the largest concrete dam in Iran which has been completely designed and constructed by local engineers.
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