A total of $260 million worth of engineering and technical services were exported from Iran during the first four months of the current Iranian year (March 21-July 22), registering a 41% rise compared with the corresponding period of last year, says the spokesperson of the Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade.
Total engineering and technical services exports stood at $2.3 billion in the fiscal 2021-22, registering a 367% rise compared to the year before, Omid Qalibaf was quoted as saying by IRIB News.
“There is huge potential for Iranian engineering and technical services companies in the fields of construction of power plants, electricity transmission, construction of refineries and cement-related industries,” he added.
According to Secretary of Iranian Syndicate of Construction Companies Iraj Golabetounchi, the neighboring Iraq is Iran’s main export destination for technical and engineering services.
“Iran undertook about 900 construction projects worth $32 billion in 21 countries from the Iranian year 1994-95 to 2020-21. The figure reached its height in 2011-12 when we exported around $4.2 billion worth of technical and engineering services,” he added.
There are 56,500 firms providing technical and engineering services in Iran, from which 53,000 are contractors and the remaining 3,500 provide consulting services, which figure increases by 10% every year.
“Yet, these businesses are working at only around 70% of their full capacity. If the government prepares the ground for these businesses to employ the workforce they need and offers facilities for them to purchase their required machinery, they can triple their operating capacity.” He said.
Service exports are an important trend in global trade. Many traditional manufactured product exports increasingly contain technology that requires installation, troubleshooting, maintenanc, and repairs.
According to Trade Ready, a service export is, very simply, any service provided by a resident in one country to people or companies of another.
Examples include franchise support and knowhow supplied to a foreign franchisee, architects and engineers designing a project abroad or a team of consultants traveling to a foreign destination to assist the installation or trouble-shooting of equipment.
