Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct.6/ Trend F.Milad/
The Qayen steel plant, in northeast of Iran, will create 3,000 jobs once it comes on stream next spring, the IRIB reported on Saturday.
The project is completed by 50 percent and it will be inaugurated in the first quarter of the next Iranian year, which begins on March 21, 2013.
The plant will have the capacity to produce one million tons of steel per year. Some 2 billion rials ($160,000) has been invested in the project and the same amount is required to complete it.
Iran produced some 7.5 million tons of crude steel during the first half of the current Iranian calendar year, which began on March 20, a 9.2 percent rise year on year, IRNA reported.
"Iran will no longer need to import steel products next year once the underway steel production projects come on stream," the deputy industry minister said on September 9.
Reza Fatemi-Amin told IRNA that some 7 million tons of crude steel is imported annually.
Iran will become one of the world's main steel exporters by March 2016, Industry, Mine, and Trade Minister Mehdi Ghazanfari said in May 2011.
He added that despite global economic sanctions, the country's steel output increased by 5 million tons during the past two years, reaching 17 million tons.