Iranian firm to set up $81m iron plant in Samawa

MUTHANNA / IraqiNews.com: An Iranian company delegation arrived in the city of al-Samawa on Sunday to negotiate over the construction of an iron & steel company in the province of al-Muthanna at a cost of $81 million. “We are in the final stages of negotiations with the Iraqi investment agency to sign a final deal on the construction of an iron & steel plant in Muthanna province. The initial costs of the project are $81 million with a planned production capacity of 250,000-500,000 tons of iron molds and different kinds of reinforced iron,” Mujtabi Hashimi, the Iranian group director, said in a press conference he held at the Iraqi investment agency HQ. “We have similar plants in Iran that export hundreds of thousands of tons of iron to global markets and we would be pleased to invest in this field in Iraq and the province of Muthanna,” Hashimi said. He noted that his company is currently negotiating to build cement plants in the holy Shiite city of Karbala. For his part, the Iraqi investment agency chief, Adel Dakhil al-Yasseri, told IraqiNews.com news agency that the agreement was initially endorsed with the Iranian company and an Iraqi businessman and investor Ahmed Farhoud al-Khawam as an official partner in the project pending the completion of the investment license procedures. Samawa, the capital city of Muthanna, lies 280 km south of Baghdad. AmR (S) 1