Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 16
By Farhad Daneshvar – Trend:
Iran has taken measures aimed at renewing the country’s garment manufacturing industry, in a bid to enter the international markets, an industry official told Trend.
“Exporting apparel products to the neighboring countries, including the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] and, in particular, Azerbaijan, is on the agenda,” the head of Tehran’s Apparel Manufacturers and Retailers Union, Abolqasem Shirazi said.
He added that capabilities of the Iranian manufacturers for producing clothing items have doubled over the past year.
Iranian media outlets earlier reported that about 1,500 industrial units and 30,000 employees were involved in the country’s clothing sector with a capacity for producing 340,000 tons of garments per year.
Saying that the international sanctions over the past several years slowed down the industry and its exports, he added that, after the removal of nuclear related sanctions on the Islamic Republic in January of 2016, the Iranian manufacturers have developed plans to export about 30 percent of their total output.
He further touched upon the issue of Iran’s clothing items imports and said that, notwithstanding the recent calls for support of domestic production, the volume of garment imports has significantly dropped.
Shirazi estimated that, in the period prior to the new Iranian year (starting March 20), domestically-produced garment items have formed about 50 percent of the Tehran’s total clothing items markets.
According to his observations, the public interest in the domestic products has dramatically surged over the recent months.
Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's Education and Research Committee Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi, had earlier said that the garment sector has an annual turnover of 400 trillion rials (over $12 billion according to the official rate).