Mohsen Shaterzadeh made the remarks in a news conference, adding that negotiations pertain to the establishment of 'new steel mills' with foreign investment and the supply of energy including electricity and gas for the project.

"Once the project is finalized, Iran will ink a memorandum of understanding with the European company to invest the aforementioned capital in steel industries, power plant and gas refinery
installations," he added.

The main goal is to establish steel industry, since the industry is energy-consuming, the construction of power plants is necessary to meet the industry's initial requirements such as gas-operated power plants, he noted.

Shaterzadeh also said that one of strategic policies of the Ministry of Industries and Mines is construction of special zones for energy-consuming industries including steel, aluminum and cement industries.

Pointing to detailed plans for energy-consuming industries raised by the ministry, he said that it has began studies related to the plan, and will implement them in a couple of months.

A domestic consortium is being formed to undertake the use of gas field, establishment of refinery, and construction of gas power plant in this respect, he noted.

It was expected that discussions would be finalized today, but there was misunderstanding over a substance of the MoU, which caused a delay for signing, he said.

According to the agreements, signed in the first nine months of the current Iranian year (started March 20, 2006), some dlrs 8.9 billion of foreign investments have been absorbed in this respect which are incomparable with the dlrs 1.4 billion in last year, he added.

Referring to the attraction of dlrs 1.2 billion of foreign investments in petrochemical industry, he noted that investments pertained to various industrial sectors in the current year.      

منبع: zawya