The Development of Iran's Non-Oil Exports, 1990-2011
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September 2021 - 18 Pages
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Executive Summary
In 1999, a report published by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) noted that Iran’s non-oil exports were languishing at $1.3 billion per year and were mostly limited to carpets and dried fruits. By the end of 2011, the country was exporting $24 billion in non-oil goods per year, amounting to a 1,725% increase over the 22 years, and a 700% increase since 2000. This paper will divide this period into two date ranges: January 1990 to December 1999 and January 2000 to December 2011. It will utilise data collated from numerous databases to present the changes that occurred in Iranian export revenue, and ‘export product’ and ‘export market’ composition, and will then analyse the drivers of change behind these trends. This paper finds that the main factors contributing to the increase in Iranian non-oil exports can be categorised into three groups: ‘top-down’ government policy, external developments, and ‘bottom-up’ company- and industry-level behaviour. The first and second of these factors were necessary developments for export diversification, while the third provided the necessary catalysing force in the 2000s. Finally, this paper details the implications of these findings for readjusting the understanding of Iran’s modern economy: the key role in contemporary sanctions survival of the robust and complex non-oil sector development since the 1990s; the growth and shift towards Iran’s regional and eastern trade markets, and large potential for further growth; Iran’s impressive industrial development in a period of little foreign direct investment (FDI); and the higher-than-assumed degree of effective cooperation between state programming and company- and industry-level behaviour.
About the Author
Marcus Solarz Hendriks is a final year undergraduate student of Arabic, Persian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is the Director of Strategy, Operations and Development of Cambridge’s Middle East and North Africa Forum (MENAF), the university’s Middle East-focused think tank, and covers Iran for the forum’s strategic brief. As well as this, he has experience working for a political and strategic advisory firm with senior governmental clients across the Middle East, and as an open-source intelligence collector and analyst on Iran for IHS Markit’s Country Risk desk.
