Official statistics show that over the past ten years, $3.7 billion has been directly invested in Iran, 53 percent and 29 percent by European and the American countries, respectively and the rest by the Asians.
Fars News Agency here Friday quoted Deputy Head of Economic and Finance Minister Mohammad Khazaie as saying that $2.3 billion of the whole investment (70 percent) has been gathered from 1993 to 2002 and $1.4 billion during past ten months.
33, 20, 14, and 8 percent have been allocated to oil and gas, tire and plastic, basic metal industries, and metal products for the use of auto industry, respectively while engineering and planning, construction materials, and drinking industry could grab 9, 6, and 5 percent of the mentioned investment, according to the official.
The Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, which prohibited trade with Iran and Libya, postponed some new investment in Iranian oil and gas fields and imposed modest costs on the Iranian economy.
Besides barring trade with Iran, the United States passed a law that imposes sanctions on foreign companies that invest $20 million or more a year in Iran's oil and gas sectors, imposing costs on U.S. firms that would normally compete for sales to and investments in Iran as well.
A 1997 study by the Institute for International Economics showed that since 1970, unilateral U.S. sanctions had achieved foreign policy goals only 13 percent of the time. The study also concluded that sanctions cost the United States $15 billion to $19 billion annually in potential exports.
The sanctions, begun initially a few years after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, have induced no significant changes in Iranian policy since even U.S allies are not interested in giving up Iran’s virgin market.
AF/IS
END
MNA
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