With the reimposition of the harsh sanctions against Iranian oil exports in 2018 by the Trump administration, officials in Iran have focused on non-oil exports as the only viable way to meet the country's foreign exchange needs. But the country's trade policies have failed to resolve the bottleneck created in the absence of petrodollars.

In terms of commodity diversity, most of the country's non-oil exports are still dependent on oil and mineral products. These products cannot be considered industrial goods due to their low value add, as they are not upgraded into higher value products and thus bring in less revenue for the country.

In fact, more than one third of the country's non-oil export revenues in 2018-19 came from the sale of mineral products. Despite constituting less than 4% of non-oil export items, they accounted for more than 36% of the country's export revenue in the same year. Of note, only five items had been responsible for almost a quarter of the country's export revenues of non-oil goods in the past 17 years, according to a report by Iran's Parliamentary Research Center (IPRC) on May 12. Revenues for the first 15 items on the list reached 46%, almost half of the foreign exchange earnings, over 2018-19.

As the key development strategy and planning instrument, according to the law of the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan (2016-21), the country's non-oil exports should increase with 21.7% annually from $42.1 billion in 2016-17 to $112.8 billion by 2021-22. Over 2018-2019, the country's total exports and non-oil exports were $87.9 billion and $44.7 billion, respectively, a far cry from the goals specified in the Sixth Plan. According to the same law, the aggregate value of Iran's non-oil trade excluding gas condensate in the year 2021-22 should equal $112.7 billion. This seems an unlikely target since more than three and a half years of the five years allotted to implement this grandiose plan have already passed.