Iran: $10 billion foreign trade surplus with oil revenues

During the past eight months, Iran recorded a foreign trade surplus of $10 billion, according to a statement by the Iranian Minister of Economy, Ehsan Khandouzi.

Today, Saturday, the Iranian Tasnim News Agency reported in a report that Khandouzi confirmed that this surplus was achieved by calculating the revenues from Iranian oil exports.

Note that the Iranian authorities do not disclose their revenues from oil exports, since Washington imposed a complete ban on these exports starting in 2019.

Khandouzi added that during the past eight months, his country exported goods worth $32 billion, but at the same time it imported goods worth $42.1 billion. This reveals a deficit in Iran’s non-oil trade balance of $10 billion.

If we calculate the Iranian foreign trade surplus during the past eight months at a value of more than 10 billion dollars, according to the statement of the Iranian Minister of Economy, and taking into account the Iranian trade deficit in non-oil trade, that is, the difference between exports and imports during that period, then Iranian oil exports have reached More than $20 billion during the past eight months.

The Iranian Minister of Economy attributed the deficit in the trade balance to external reasons related to the decline in commodity prices on the global market, noting that, for example, the prices of petrochemical products, which constitute a large part of Iranian non-oil trade, fell by about 40 percent in the world, which left a negative impact on Iranian export revenue figures.