BAKU, Azerbaijan, Dec. 12
By Elnur Baghishov - Trend:
In the last six years (Iran's current government came to power in August 2013), Iran's free trade zones exported goods for $125 billion, the Secretary of Iranian Free Zones High Council, President's Adviser on Free Trade Morteza Bank said at a ceremony dedicated to the opening of a mining enterprise in a free zone in Rafsanjan county of Iran's Kerman province, Trend reports via IRNA.
So, annually, $20 billion worth goods were exported from Iran's free zones, Bank said.
Bank noted that the share of Iran's free zones in the country's $48 billion exports in the last Iranian year (from March 21, 2019 to March 21, 2019) was $24 billion.
Moreover, $35 billion worth goods, produced in free zones, were distributed within Iran, Morteza Bank said.
This indicates that operations of the free zones in the reported period were worth $160 billion, he added.
The president's adviser noted that in the six-year period, about 710 trillion rials (roughly $16.9 billion) of domestic investments and $22 billion of foreign investments were made in the free zones of Iran.
There 1,800 industrial and production facilities in Iran's free zones, and they employ 500,000 people, Morteza Bank added that the free zones occupy 0.3 percent of the country's territory.
In the last two years, the amount of investments in Iran's free zones increased by 100 percent, Morteza Bank said.
In total, $200 million will be invested in the mining enterprise of Rafsanjan Special Economic Zone, the president's adviser said.
The first phase of the enterprise has been commissioned with $50 million investments, and the whole project will be fully implemented within six months, he added.