Tehran, Iran, Aug. 14
By Mehdi Sepahvand – Trend:
The Iranian government is going to stage an international exhibition showcasing rural industrial capabilities as a means to reduce the country’s reliance on petrodollars, the Rural Department of the Presidential Office told Trend August 14.
Building on the back of past years’ rural expos in the capital city of Tehran, the department is now going to stage an international arena to connect Iran’s rural market to regional and international markets in an exhibit to be held in Isfahan Province August 24-25, the department said.
The rural population constitutes 21 million of the nearly 85 million population of the Iranian nation.
The production of wheat, almost entirely rural-based and farmer-operated, has been a key achievement of the Rouhani administration, ridding the country of the need to import wheat and even succeeding in exporting the surplus product. Iran expects to export 1 million tons of surplus wheat and its products this year, up 60 percent from a year ago.
Although oil revenues allowed the Rouhani government to bring inflation down to single digits, petrodollars have proved an unreliable income especially since prices plunged from around $100 in the early 2010s to $40 a couple of years ago, giving the Iranian government the hint that it should wean its economy from oil.
Iran has been in particular attaching strategic significance to the well-being of rural people in light of security situations around its borders, seeing that economic problems have provided grounds for the young ones in neighboring countries to join bandits and terror gangs.
Last year, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued an executive order to allocate $500 million from the National Development Fund to projects to be accomplished in the under-developed southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan.