Over 615 cities and 4,200 villages nationwide have access to gas network, director of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) said.
Speaking at the induction ceremony of the new director of Golestan Gas Company on Saturday, Azizollah Ramezani recalled that only five cities (50,000 subscribers) were connected to the national gas network prior to the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, IRNA said.
Commending NIGC’s performance, the official said that although the company was established 40 years ago, it has an important role in development of the country by expansion of national gas networks.
Meanwhile, outgoing director of the Golestan Gas Company, Mostafa Alavi, briefed the audience on services provided to provincial subscribers during his tenure.
Ramezanali Sangdavini takes over as the new head of the company.
At present, 250,000 households in about 300 villages and 22 cities have access to gas networks in the province.
In a related development, ISNA reported that households, commercial and industrial units as well as power plants consumed over 1,900 million cubic meters of gas in the week to June 8.
In other words, gas consumption averaged more than 272 million cubic meters per day during the period.
Average daily gas consumption increased by 38 million cubic meters compared to the figure for the same period last year which was 234 million cubic meters.
Last week, each Iranian family consumed average 7.5 cubic meter of gas per day.

Flooding caused as a result of Cyclone Gonu and its aftermath severed road and telecommunications links and disrupted drinking water supplies to villages in southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province.
Announcing this, deputy governor general of the province for development affairs stated in a meeting of Sistan-Baluchestan Natural Disasters Headquarters on Sunday that the flooding had damaged water supply networks to 427 villages in southern Sistan-Baluchestan.
So far water networks in 27 villages have been repaired, Mehdi Safdari added.
The official noted that over 230 heavy vehicles are working round-the-clock to reopen the roads, IRIBNews reported.
Telephone lines in 300 rural regions were affected by the flood as well. So far telephone connections to 200 villages have been restored.
Meanwhile, floods caused by Cyclone Gonu have submerged shrimp farms in Gwater Bay wiping out huge amounts of shrimps.
Managing director of Sistan-Baluchestan Shrimp Farmers Union said that six shrimp farms covering 4,000 hectares were inundated.
The six farms which had started shrimp culture one and half years ago bred 400,000 shrimps each, Keivan Rahbari noted.
Regretting the recent damage to the province’s shrimp industry, he called on the government to write-off loans of farmers.
Cyclone Gonu ripped through the coast of Oman and southeastern Iran on Wednesday and Thursday.

Uncontrolled imports of sugar in recent months has triggered dilemma for domestic sugar factories which are grappling with numerous problems, said a South Khorasan workers’ representative.
Gholamali Firouzi regretted that unbridled imports have also inflicted damage to Birjand’s Qahestan Sugar Factory. “Over 100 workers of the factory have not received their wages and are living on subsistence level because of unchecked sugar imports,“ he warned.
At present, the factory’s output, like the production of other factories, has not been stocked and sold in shops, he told ILNA.
Even major factories faced many problems in recent months, Firouzi added.
“Qahestan Factory is wrestling with hardships although it has renovated its equipment and technical installations and has an efficient management.“
He blamed the officials for failing to check high sugar import.
In late May, deputy agricultural jihad minister for planning affairs, Sadeq Khalilian also warned against excessive import of some crops.
“Last year, import of rice exceeded national demand,“ Khalilian noted, elaborating, “The same was true for sugar whose import was two to three times higher than domestic demand.“

Iran exported nearly two million tons of steel products in the year to March 2007.
In a fax to IRNA, National Iranian Steel Company announced that steel production is expected to exceed 28 million tons by the end of the Fourth Five-Year Development Plan in 2010, of which 6.5 million tons will be produced under provincial projects.
With a 10-million ton output of the total 113 million tons of steel produced worldwide, Iran contributes only one percent to global steel production. The Fourth Development Plan foresees an increase in this figure to 2.25 percent.
By 2021, Iran is expected to produce 54.6 million tons of steel products accounting for 3.5 percent of the global steel production.
In line with its policies, the company has prioritized facilitating raw material supply, boosting export and expediting the implementation of development projects, particularly those in the provinces.
Eight provincial steel ventures include five projects that are in the contract process, while executive operations for steel projects have started in three sites located in Shadegan, Mianeh and Charmahal-Bakhtiari.

Quality of bread will continue to fall unless prices increase.

Organization for Supporting Consumers has proposed a plan to the Economic Council to increase bread prices, Commerce Minister Massoud Mir Kazemi disclosed Sunday.
According to Fars, the minister stated at a press conference that while wages, rents, electricity and water charges have gone up in the year to March 2008 compared to figures for last year, the price of bread has remained unchanged.
He blamed unchanged prices for the decline in the quality of bread.
The minister warned, “The quality of bread will continue to fall unless prices increase.“
The organization suggested a price increase after assessing the current situation of bread in the country.
He stated that governor general offices in all provinces (excluding Tehran) have been assigned to change price of bread as per a formula set by the council.
“Therefore, the government should currently endorse change in bread prices in Tehran province,“ Mir Kazemi concluded.
Presently, per capita bread subsidy stands at 360,000 rials. Consumption of wheat, power and fuel in Iran is one of the highest in the world.
Despite the high value of bread in Iranian culture, proper attention has not been paid to consumption patterns. About 30 percent of bread is wasted. Subsidies to the tune of some 30,000 billion rials are also allocated to bread production but this needs revision.

Optical fiber can be used as a medium for telecommunication and networking because it is flexible and can be bundled as cables.

A team of experts has been dispatched to the Iran-Pakistan border to assess the possibility of connecting the optical fiber networks of the two countries, said a member of Board of Directors of Iran’s Infrastructure Telecommunications Company.
Speaking to ISNA, Jalal Mahfouzi predicted that the optical fiber networks of the two countries will be linked within the next five-six months. Capacity of fiber will initially be 64 STM1 links, he elaborated.
The official underlined that Iran currently has optical fiber connectivity with other neighboring states.
Pakistan and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding to the effect in mid-May. Tehran and Islamabad began talks on possible overland optical fiber connectivity in December 2005. The link will reportedly cost one million dollar.
An optical fiber is a glass or plastic fiber designed to guide light along its length by confining as much light as possible in a propagating form. In fibers with large core diameter, the confinement is based on total internal reflection.
Optical fiber can be used as a medium for telecommunication and networking because it is flexible and can be bundled as cables. It is especially advantageous for long-distance communications, because light propagates through the fiber with little attenuation compared to electrical cables.

Fars province is the country’s biggest producer of rose, known as ’Mohammadi’, from which rosewater is extracted, director of provincial Agricultural Jihad Department said.
The southern province produces 23 percent of the country’s total sweet-scented flowers, Mohammad Kazem Behjou was quoted by ISNA as saying on Sunday.
Over 41,000 hectares are under ’Mohammadi’ rose cultivation producing more than 4,900 tons each year, the official noted.
Some 54 traditional workshops and 11 industrial units are involved in the extraction of 10 million tons of rosewater and 30 kilograms of essence in the province annually, he elaborated.
Warning against recent practice to produce rosewater from artificial essences, the official explained that the measure has created chaos in the international rosewater market.
Price of rosewater, which reached $3.24 per kilo in 2004, plummeted to $1.96 per kilo in 2005 due to such practices, he regretted. “This measure has heavily hurt producers, tradesmen and factories involved in rosewater production.“
Referring to wholesale indices of Mohammadi flowers in the domestic market during 1996-2005, Behjou recalled that price of the sweet-scented roses fell to 3,000 rials per kilogram in 2005 from 4,000 rials in 1996. The prices remained unchanged in 2007. He elaborated, “If we consider national inflation rate at average 10 percent, the price of each kilogram of Mohammadi flower should have increased to 6,700 rials in the domestic market in 2007.“
Easy access to artificial essences has caused certain unknown workshops not to use Mohammadi flowers as the main material for producing rosewaters, the official concluded.
Rosewater was first obtained by distilling roses in Iran. Rosewater has a very distinctive flavor and is used heavily in South Asian, West Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine--especially in sweets. It is also used for religious purposes in Islam.
In the Western world, rosewater is better known as an ingredient in cosmetics than as a food flavoring.

Sistan-Baluchestan province has the country’s youngest population, the head of Iran’s Statistics Center, Mohammad Madad said, quoting the results of the Sixth Nationwide Population and Housing Census.
People aged less than 14 years of age made up 38.85 percent of the population in the southeastern province--one of the most deprived provinces in the country, the official said, reported IRIBNews on Saturday.
According to him, Hormuzgan ranked second in terms of population under-14 which made up 30.9 percent of the total inhabitants.
Madad stated that Hormuzgan was followed by the provinces of North Khorasan (29.3 percent), Kohkiloyeh-Boyerahmad (28.9 percent), South Khorasan and Khuzestan (28.5 percent) as well as Kerman (28.3 percent).
People in the 0-14 age bracket comprised 21.25 percent of the population in the northern province of Gilan making it the lowest in the nation, he added.
The official noted that Mazandaran and Tehran provinces follow Gilan in this respect with 21.3 percent and 21.4 percent respectively.
Tehran province has the highest number of people in the 15-65-year age group which stands at 73.6 percent, Madad said, adding that the provinces of Mazandaran (72.7 percent) and Isfahan (72.1) rank after Tehran.
Gilan also had the largest number of elderly people. The 65-plus age group accounts for 7.3 percent of Gilan population followed by the province of South Khorasan (7.2 percent) and Markazi (6.8 percent).

Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure on Saturday called on Iranian experts and engineers to build Kania dam and power plant in the near future as a symbol of bilateral cooperation.
The Malian president was speaking in a meeting with the visiting Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Mohammad-Reza Baqeri, reported IRNA.
He conveyed his and the Malian nation’s warm greetings to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Muslim Iranian people.
He invited his Iranian counterpart to visit Bamako.
Toumani Toure said he was deeply impressed by the great progress made by the Islamic Republic of Iran in all fields despite economic sanctions imposed against the country and problems caused by the eight-year Iraqi imposed war of 1980-1988.
He called for utilization of Iran’s valuable experience in all fields.
At the meeting, the two sides discussed important axes for cooperation between Tehran and Bamako and stressed the significance of further strengthening bilateral ties.
Baqeri conveyed the warm greetings of the Iranian president to his Malian counterpart, nation and Muslim people.
Iran and Mali have very good relations in all economic, political, cultural and health fields.

Director General of the Foreign Ministry’s Central and Northern Europe Desk Ali Baqeri has called for expansion of trade and economic ties with Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Baqeri made the remark on Sunday during a meeting with visiting Bosnian Minister of Trade and Economic Relations Slobodan Puhalac, IRNA reported. The Iranian official said grounds have been prepared for the participation of Bosnian companies in Iran’s economic sector.
Establishment of a joint economic committee between the two countries as well as Iran-Bosnia Joint Chamber of Commerce would help boost bilateral cooperation in various economic fields, he said.
Puhalac, for his part, stressed the importance of promoting bilateral economic ties and called for concluding an agreement on preferential trade tariffs between Tehran and Sarajevo.
The Bosnian minister welcomed Iran-Bosnia investment in a third country.