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bottlenecks elsewhere.
“Because of the warm winter, in 2020, the shipment of grain to ships travelling from the region to Iran was continuous. From January 1 to June 1, 53 vessels were sent from the Volgograd elevator, 48 of them to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the quoted source at the committee said.
She added that in the first five months of the year, an overall 332,000 tonnes of grain have been exported from the Russian region, compared to 270,000 tonnes in the same period of 2019.
However, she noted that a number of other Russian regions did not systematically fulfil their agricultural product export plans for Iran and elsewhere despite getting sufficient orders.
9.1.9​ Construction & property sector news
The sale of several properties owned by the Iranian state in Albania, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan has been proposed in a letter sent to the Rouhani cabinet by Iran’s foreign ministry, according to details published by​ Cabinetoffice.ir​.
The properties include apartments, embassy buildings and land. Some of the properties are said to be in the way of redevelopment plans drawn up by the host cities. Unofficially, however, social media users are pointing to the empty coffers of the foreign ministry as the real reason for the sales appetite, with Iran struggling economically given the US sanctions throttling its economy. According to the foreign ministry, two buildings belonging to the Iranian embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan are within the scope of the city’s ‘urban development plan’. Also, a piece of land belonging to the Iranian embassy in Tirana, Albania, initially purchased for the construction of the embassy's residence, is said to be unsuitable for the purpose, while five apartments owned by Iran’s mission in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, are on the ministry's for sale list.
Iran has dozens of embassies globally, with the vast majority of prime properties purchased during the time of the last Shah prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In recent years, Iran has sought to offload properties including valuable assets in London's Kensington district, where a proposed futuristic-looking Iranian embassy was rejected by planners and objected to by Prince Charles. Americans claiming to be victims of Iranian state-sponsored terrorism—with such claims typically made in the US courts even when the terrorist atrocity has no provable direct relation to Iran—have also sought to achieve the sale of Iranian state-owned properties abroad. US plaintiffs have attempted to obtain legal orders making them cashable assets from which compensation payments can be drawn.
The average price for a square metre of a residential unit in Tehran stood at Iranian rial (IRR) 127mn ($3,016 at the official exchange rate, $1,123 at the free market rate) at the end of the Persian calendar month of Mehr (ended October 22), marking 0.4% m/m and 47.7% y/y increases, ILNA has reported citing Central Bank of Iran (CBI) data.
The CBI surveys the property market via its online residential sales system which logs sales on the national level. The severe devaluation of the rial together with soaring inflation in the past year and a half since the US reintroduced heavy sanctions against Tehran has wrought some havoc with Iran’s property market.
Also according to the official data, the total amount of residential unit
52​ IRAN Country Report July 2020 www.intellinews.com