Tehran Times

“Over 84 percent of the imported items include raw materials, basic goods or intermediaries that are necessary for the production and operation of domestic units,” TPO portal quoted Zadboum as saying.

Referring to the restriction of order registration for goods that have similar productions inside the country, the official said: “Last year, the imports of 1,600 items with an eight-digit HS code was banned. The number, however, has reached 2,400 items this [Iranian calendar] year (started on March 19).”

He further put the value of imports in the first four months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20-July 21) at $11 billion saying: "We are trying to reduce the registration of orders for goods that are already produced inside the country by weekly monitoring of imported goods and gradually in the near future, we will completely ban the import of all such products in order to boost domestic production.”

According to the official, Iran's imports during the first quarter of this Iranian calendar year (March 20-June 20) exceeded $7.6 billion, which compared to the $10.4 billion in the same period last year, experienced a decrease of 26.8 percent, and yet in terms of weight, the figure was 8.9 million tons, which is 0.8 percent less than the figure for the same period last year.

Since the re-imposition of the U.S. sanctions, Iran has been focusing on the promotion of domestic production and limiting the imports in order to move the economy toward self-sufficiency and resilience.

In early April, Industry, Mining, and Trade Ministry outlined its major programs for supporting the domestic production in the current Iranian year that is named the year of “Surge in Production” by the Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.

Developing technology and promoting knowledge-based industries, development of domestic production in line with the Leader’s stresses on surge in production, managing imports and development of non-oil exports, improving the business environment, development of financing and investment, and finally development of logistics were reported to be the seven major axes of the Industry, Mining and Trade Ministry’s works in the current year.