President’s Adviser and Secretary of Supreme Council of Free Zones Morteza Bank made the remark on Sunday and said, “some $118 billion worth of products were exported from the zone in the past five years.”
In addition, $38 billion worth of products was imported in the zone, registering a significant $80 billion worth of trade balance.
Speaking in a meeting of ‘strategies of development of services, products and exports of top Iranian companies’, held at the venue of IRIB Intl. Conferences Center, he added, “free zones account for 0.3 percent of total land area of the country, so that free zones are home to less than one million people.”
He put the current number of industrial, mineral and agricultural units in these zones at 1,607 and reiterated, “free zones have generated employment opportunities for 285,000 people of the country.”
He termed strengthening investment opportunities, spurring production and exports in this zone ‘necessary and essential’.
Getting easy access to the cheaper raw materials has decreased production cost in free and special economic zones considerably, Morteza Bank opined.
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