Iran's Mercantile Exchange up 60%

The Latest official statistics showed that the value of Iran’s Mercantile Exchange (IME) has increased by 60 percent in the last 9 months. “Our biggest reason for the past months’ recent success is because of Iran’s extreme increase in national production; our hottest commodities are industry and mine, petroleum, crude oil and agriculture,” said IME Deputy of Operations Mehrzad Namdari, press tv reported. Since March 2013, trade volume has increased by 19 percent at the IME, despite the illegal US-engineered sanctions against Iran, especially those targeting its oil and banking sectors, over the country’s nuclear energy program. “The sanctions actually helped us, because national production has grown at its highest levels ever, foreign investors started investing more in the IME, and in the last nine month, the IME value has increased by 60 percent compared to the same period a year earlier,” Namdari added. The commodity exchange is located in Iran’s capital Tehran. Founded in 2006, the IME trades in agricultural, industrial and petrochemical products in the spot and futures markets. The IME is the largest and highest value commodity market in Middle East and is registered with the Association of Futures Markets (AFM) and the Federation of Euro-Asian Stock Exchanges (FEAS), which is a non-profit international organization comprising the main stock exchanges in Eastern Europe, the Middle-East and Central Asia. “Many of the countries…(which) are regular customers of Iranian oil products and oil industry -- for example India, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Korea, China and… companies from Australia… South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania -- are among the major customers and clients of this market,” said IME head of international affairs Mohammad Reza Tahmasebi.