Azerbaijan, Baku, Aug.6/ Trend R.Zamanov
Iran's government has approved to finance seven provincial steel projects across the country, deputy industry, mine, and trade minister said on Tuesday.
"The construction plans of the mentioned projects will be facilitated," the Mehr News Agency quoted Amir Amini as saying.
He went on to note that provincial projects are economically justified.
Iranian Deputy Minister of Industry, Mine and Trade Vajihollah Ja'fari said June 30 that the country plans to boost its crude steel production capacity up to 24 million tons by the end of the current calendar year (March 20, 2014).
Iran's crude steel production capacity stood at 500,000 tons in 1978 but currently it is around 20 million tons, the IRNA News Agency quoted Ja'fari as saying.
By inauguration of some steel production projects in provinces of Gilan, Yazd, Esfahan, and Fars some 4 million tons would be added to the country's total crude steel production capacity, he explained.
Ja'fari said last April that the country's annual crude steel output is projected to reach 55 million tons by 2025.
The latest statistics released by the World Steel Association shows that Iran has produced 6.077 million tons of crude steel in the first five months of 2013.
Iran's crude steel output in May stood at 1.287 million tons, which is 3.7 percent more than the same period previous year, the IRNA News Agency reported.
The country's production growth in May was more than other major producers of the world including India, USA, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, UK, Russia, and Ukraine.
Some 658 million tons of crude steel was produced across the globe in the first five months of the current year.
The figure shows 2.1 percent increase compared to the same period of time the previous year.
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.
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