Foreign Investment in Iran Increased by 50%: Minister

Iranian Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Farhad Dezhpasand said in a press conference on Tuesday that the 50% increase in investment has been achieved despite efforts to cut foreign investment.

Referring to the historical course of efforts to cut oil dependence in the years following the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he added, “In 1996, Leader of the Islamic Revolution issued orders to build an economy without oil dependence.”

Much effort has been made to cut oil revenues and define alternative solutions, most notably tax revenues, he underlined.
“In the eleventh and twelfth governments [the Rouhani administration], nothing has been borrowed from the banking system for public financing.”

Elsewhere in his remarks, Dezhpasand reiterated that tax revenues now cover a significant portion of government spending.

Referring to enemy’s efforts to zero out Iran’s non-oil exports, he said that in the first six months of this year, the volume of non-oil exports increased by 20 percent in terms of weight, but decreased by 3 percent in value terms.