Baku, Azerbaijan, May 17
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iran exported $200 million worth of software during the last Iranian fiscal year (ended on March 20), Mahmoud Vaezi, the country's Communications and Information Technology minister said.
The figure is "promising," Vaezi said, adding the ministry has implemented serious supportive measures towards the companies involved in the issue in recent months.
He further said that effective steps have been taken in programming area in the country, Iran's Mehr news agency reported May 17.
Official statistics also say that Iran exported $400 million worth of software during the fiscal year, which ended on March 21, 2014.
However the figures are not reliable and some experts believe that the real value is lower.
"Meanwhile the latest official statistics put the exports' value for Iranian fiscal year of 1392(ended on March 21, 2014) at $400 million, we believe that the real value is lower than that," Mohammad Reza Talaei, head of the Union of Iranian Software Exporters said.
There are various obstacles in the way of software exporters, he said, adding the official figure for software exports should not be considered as accurate.
On the other hand, if the announced values are true, Iran's software exports indicate a fall by 100 percent during the last fiscal year compared to the preceding year.
The value of Iran's software exports stood at $90 million during the Iranian fiscal year of 1391(ended on March 21, 2013) and $100 million in the preceding year, according to the Union of Iranian Software Exporters.
The Iranian ministry of Communications and Information Technology estimates that software exports share only 0.7 percent of the country's GDP, meanwhile it was projected that the figure reach two percent by the end of the Islamic Republic's Fifth Economic Development Plan 2010-2015.
A report by the Iranian parliament Research Center suggests that the share of software exports from total industrial exports was in decline in recent years.
The figure stood at 1.5 percent in 2005, but declined to 0.73 percent in 2013 and stood at some 0.56 percent in 2014.
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