Iran-Syria Chamber of Commerce, affiliated with Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture, is going to send business delegations to Damascus for holding talks on export of Iranian cement to Syria.
The delegation will be holding B2B meetings with their Syrian counterparts and take part in an international conference in Damascus, ICCIMA reported on its news portal.
The Iranian delegations include cement producers and suppliers of raw materials and reconstruction services of cement production line.
The delegations are scheduled to visit Syria from July 26 to 28.
Those interested can obtain more information by contacting +21-85732195.
Iran has offered to help Syria rebuild its war-torn areas after years of conflict.
Tehran and Damascus have a free trade agreement in place. The agreement, according to Director General of Trade Promotion Organization of Iran’s Arab and African Affairs Department Farzad Piltan, can have a significant effect on easing trade between the two sides, adding that Syria’s high demand in agricultural products, food, home appliances, pharmaceuticals, construction material, sanitaryware, agro machinery and equipment, and Iran’s capabilities in these areas, coupled with reasonable prices and high quality can boost commercial interactions between the two sides.
Syria and Iran concluded a free trade agreement in February 2012, which included reducing customs duties to 4% on goods traded between the two countries, cancelling all quantitative restrictions and lifting the ban on imports with similar effects.
The agreement came into force on March 12, 2012, and included an agreement to allow commercial trucks to pass between the two countries through Iraq.
Exports to Syria stood at $49 million in the first two months of the current fiscal year (March 21-May 21), registering a 73% growth in terms of value year-on-year, according to the head of Syria Desk at Trade Promotion Organization of Iran's Office for Arab-African Affairs.
“Steam turbine parts with $30 million (60%) had the highest share in the value of products exported to Syria. Other exported products included electrical conductors, iron or steel bars and infants' milk powder,” Soheila Rasoulinejad added.
Total imports from Syria stood at $2 million in the same period.
World’s Seventh Biggest Producer
Iran was ranked the world’s seventh biggest producer of cement in 2020 by the United States Geological Survey, with an output of 60 million tons.
The ranking is unchanged compared with 2019.
The country's cement production capacity is 85 million tons, of which 65 million tons are consumed domestically.
Decline in Exports
Latest data show exports of cement chain products totaled 7.63 million tons worth $163 million over the first seven months in the last Iranian year (March 20-Oct. 21, 2020), showing a 24% and 11% decline in tonnage and value respectively compared with the similar period of last year, according to a Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade report.
India, Afghanistan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Qatar, Kenya, Kuwait, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, China and Oman are main export destinations for Iranian cement.
Abdolreza Sheikhan, secretary of Iran's Cement Association, blames the decline in exports on lower demand from neighboring countries, particularly Iraq.
Iraq was once the main export destination of Iran’s cement but it has suspended imports from Iran.
“With the help of European countries, Iraqis established cement factories with a production capacity of 40 million tons and no longer need Iran’s cement,” said Hamid Hosseini, a senior member of Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce.
“At first, they increased cement import tariffs and then imposed an occasional ban. Iraq is now only purchasing clinker from Iran.”
Cement clinker is a solid material produced in the manufacture of Portland cement as an intermediary product. Clinker occurs as lumps or nodules, usually 3 millimeters to 25 millimeters in diameter. It is produced by sintering (fusing together without melting to the point of liquefaction) limestone and aluminosilicate materials such as clay during the cement kiln stage.
Noting that costs associated with the production of clinker are very high for regional countries and they prefer to import rather than produce it, Sheikhan said, “Iraq used to account for 30% of Iran’s cement exports. Today, Afghanistan is the main importer of cement from Iran; Afghanistan has to pay $50-60 per ton for importing cement from Pakistan compared with $25 per ton from Iran, plus transportation and customs. Five-month exports of cement to Afghanistan reached 584,000 tons.”
Kazakhstan’s government also introduced a ban on the import of certain types of cement from countries outside the Eurasian Economic Union for six months last year, according to Behrouz Hosn-Olfat, an official with the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran, IRNA reported
“The ban, which came into force on April 28, applied to Portland cement, clinker, alumina cement and other types of hydraulic cement. The ban will impact our cement producers since Kazakhstan is a main export destination for Iranian cement.”
According to the official, the reason for the ban was declining cement demand in Kazakhstan due to the halt in construction projects caused by the outbreak of Covid-19 as well as the fall in the neighboring country's exports.
"We have lost one of our main cement export destinations and this will have unexpected negative impacts on our industry and producers will incur hefty damages," Mohammad Lahouti, the head of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture’s Exports Confederation, was quoted as saying by ILNA.
According to the head of Cement Employers Association, more than 17.5 million tons of cement and clinker were exported from Iran in the fiscal 2019-20, registering a 32% growth compared with the previous year.
“Cement accounted for 6.7 million tons and clinker for 10.8 million tons of the total sum,” Sheikhan was quoted as saying by Mizan Online.
