Iran has been an Islamic Republic since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Its transition to an Islamic Republic led to a breakdown in relations with its former ally, the United States, followed by the Iran-Iraq war with neighboring Iraq in the 1980s, and later sanctions by the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations.
Tensions with the international community were especially acute during the presidency of Mahmud Ahmadinejad from 2005 to 2013, until the election of the more moderate President Hassan Rouhani in 2013. Tensions between Iran and the international community have eased. In 2015, Iran and the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China, Germany and the European Union reached a framework agreement on Iran's nuclear program, which outlined the reduction of international sanctions against Iran in exchange for Iran's nuclear program, and then the United Nations further lifted sanctions against Iran.
This also led to a major turnaround in Iran's normalization of relations with the world's major powers, although the new US President Trump described the agreement as "the stupidest agreement in history", and then Iran was included in Trump's controversial "travel ban" list (which had been temporarily suspended). At the end of February 2017, Iran said it would retaliate against the ban, which led some to predict that relations between the new U.S. government and Iran would deteriorate again.
I. Iran's National Economy
Iran's economy is currently dominated by the state, which directly or indirectly controls a large number of companies in various sectors of the national economy. Despite sanctions, Iran's economy remains heavily dependent on oil and gas export sales. The country ranks second in the world in terms of natural gas reserves, and its crude oil reserves have been proved to be the fourth in the world.
About half (48.6%) of the workforce in 2016 was involved in the service sector, with industry accounting for 35.1% and agriculture 16.3%. Unemployment in July 2016 was estimated at 10.7%, unchanged from the same month in 2015.
According to World Bank statistics, although Iran's GDP reached $592 billion in 2011, Iran's GDP was only $394 billion in 2015, a 33% decline mainly due to the continued decline in global oil prices. As a result of the lifting of some sanctions, the international community expects Iran's gross domestic product to rise again in 2016.
II. Introduction to Cement Industry
The origin of Iran's cement industry dates back to 1933, when the first plant, built by FLSmidth of Denmark in southern Tehran, produced only 100 tons of cement per day. This was followed by an increase in capacity in 1937, reaching a total of 9,000 tons per year, and by the 1950s and 1960s, the first real burst of growth in Iran's cement capacity.
Figure 1: Cement production in Iran from 1933 to 2015
By the end of the 1970s, despite the Iran-Iraq War and international sanctions, Iran's cement industry was really taking off after the Islamic Revolution, with an annual capacity of 8 million tons. Capacity rose to 16.9 million tons/year in the decade 1980-1990 and doubled again to 29.5 million tons/year by the end of 2000; capacity expanded even more rapidly in the decade 2000-2010, with an increase of 41.1 million tons in ten years; Since then, capacity growth has slowed, in part because of a glut of domestic cement capacity. In 2015, Iran's cement production capacity was nearly 80 million tons per year. Table 1 shows the fastest increasing phase of cement production capacity in Iran from 2005 to 2016.
Table 1: New and expanded cement production capacity in Iran from 2005 to 2016
According to the latest data released by Iran's Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade in January 2017, Iran's cement production fell by 1.4% year-on-year, and the current cement production in the first nine months was 42.7 million tons (Note: according to Iran's calendar, 2016 began on March 21, 2016 and ended on March 20, 2017).
Figure 2: Cement production and demand in Iran
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