Wto Membership Will Not Affect Steel Industry

According to “Tehran Times”, “domestic steel industry will not suffer from free trade process,” an Iranian steel industry official said, pointing to the likely membership of Iran in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Iran enjoys large reserves of iron ore that makes it possible to become one of the world’s major steel producers. “In the past few years, steel industry has been developed so that the country’s steel production increased 10fold compared to the figures in 1990,” Abdollah Ezazi stated. He put last year’s steel output at 9 million tons, predicting a 10-million-ton output for the current year. If everything goes according to plan, he noted, Iran’s steel production will touch 29 million tons by 2010.