Iran plans to increase export of non-oil commodities to 50 billion dollars by the end of the Iranian year (to end March 20, 2015), Industry, Mine, and Trade Minister Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh said on Thursday.

He made the remarks in a ceremony for inauguration of an investment project.

Iran exported approximately 11.859 billion dollars of non-oil commodities in the second 3 months of 2014, compared with 9.838 billion dollars in the same period last year, showing nearly 20.5 percent increase.

Iran’s major export items during the past quarter comprised liquefied propane, methanol and bitumen and the main export destinations were China, Iraq, the UAE, Afghanistan and Turkey respectively.

The country’s major imports in the past three months included wheat, vehicles with Internal combustion engines, rice and soya oil cake.

The imports mainly came from the UAE, China, India, Turkey and South Korea.