UAE is Iran's main trade partner

Director General of trade planning office of Iran's Trade Development Organization said today, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been Iran's main Iranian trade partner over the past eight years.

Mahdi Fathollah said that Iran's exports to UAE in the past ten years have been on the rise with an average growth rate of 27.8 percent.

Fathollah added that the trend has increased significantly since 2000 with the value of Iranian exports to the UAE rising from 44 million dollars to 2.075 billion dollars which shows a 267 percent growth.

He put the Iran's non-oil exports to the UAE in the first five months of the current Iranian year at 1.2 billion dollars. The figure for the corresponding period last year stood at 638 million dollars.

Fathollah cited the most important goods exported from Iran to the UAE in the past three years as pistachios, light lubricants, steel and precious metals.

He estimated the average growth rate of Iran's imports form UAE in the past ten years at 37.9 percent.

According to the official, during the first five months of the current Iranian year, 3.9 billion dollars worth of goods have been imported from the UAE that shows a growth of 58 percent compared to the similar period the previous year.

Iranian imports from the UAE comprise gas, cigarettes, spare parts for machinery, telecommunications and radio apparatuses, auto teller machines, mobile phones, heavy machinery and banana.