Economy of Iran - Foreign Trade and Economic Relations

Foreign Trade and Economic Relations

See also: Economic Cooperation Organization, Middle East economic integration, Developing 8 Countries, and Colombo Plan

Iran is a founding member of OPEC and the Organization of Gas Exporting Countries. Petroleum constitutes 80% of Iran's exports with a value of $46.9 billion in 2006. For the first time, the value of Iran’s non-oil exports is expected to reach the value of imports at $43 billion in 2011. Pistachios, liquefied propane, methanol (methyl alcohol), hand-woven carpets and automobiles are the major non-oil exports. Technical and engineering service exports in 2007–08 were $2.7 billion of which 40% of technical services went to Central Asia and the Caucasus, 30% ($350 million) to Iraq, and close to 20% ($205 million) to Africa. Iranian firms have developed energy, pipelines, irrigation, dams and power generation in different countries. The country has made non-oil exports a priority by expanding its broad industrial base, educated and motivated workforce and favorable location, which gives it proximity to an estimated market of some 300 million people in Caspian, Persian Gulf and some ECO countries further east.

Total import volume rose by 189% from $13.7 billion in 2000 to $39.7 billion in 2005 and $55.189 billion in 2009. Iran's major commercial partners are China, India, Germany, South Korea, Japan, France, Russia and Italy. From 1950 until 1978, the United States was Iran's foremost economic and military partner, playing a major role in infrastructure and industry modernization.

Since the mid 1990s, Iran has increased its economic cooperation with other developing countries in "south-south integration" including Syria, India, China, South Africa, Cuba and Venezuela. Iran's trade with India passed $13 billion in 2007, an 80% increase within a year. Iran is expanding its trade ties with Turkey and Pakistan and shares with its partners the common objective to create a common market in West and Central Asia through ECO.

Since 2003, Iran has increased investment in neighboring countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. In Dubai, UAE, it is estimated that Iranian expatriates handle over 20% of its domestic economy and account for an equal proportion of its population. Migrant Iranian workers abroad remitted less than $2 billion home in 2006. Between 2005 and 2009, trade between Dubai and Iran tripled to $12 billion; money invested in the local real estate market and import-export businesses, collectively known as the Bazaar, and geared towards providing Iran and other countries with required consumer goods. It is estimated that one third of Iran's imported goods and exports are delivered through the black market, underground economy, and illegal jetties.

Read more about this topic:  Economy Of Iran

Famous quotes containing the words foreign trade and, foreign trade, foreign, trade, economic and/or relations:

    “I sincerely hope that the incoming Congress will be alive, as it should be, to the importance of our foreign trade and of encouraging it in every way feasible. The possibility of increasing this trade in the Orient, in the Philippines, and in South America is known to everyone who has given the matter attention.”
    —William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    “I sincerely hope that the incoming Congress will be alive, as it should be, to the importance of our foreign trade and of encouraging it in every way feasible. The possibility of increasing this trade in the Orient, in the Philippines, and in South America is known to everyone who has given the matter attention.”
    —William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    “If one mistreats citizens of foreign countries, one infringes upon one’s duty toward one’s own subjects; for thus one exposes them to the law of retribution.”
    —Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)

    “Experience has shown that the trade of the East is the key to national wealth and influence.”
    —Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886)

    “I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.”
    —Camille Paglia (b. 1947)

    “So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn that man’s life is rounded with the same few facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and it is vain to travel to find it new.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)