The Assessment of Iran's Industrial Products Trade with Other Countries from the Perspective of Virtual Water

Todays, the low water countries have specific attention to the virtual water trade for determination of their long-run strategies. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the situation of the virtual water in Iranian industrial products trade with its partners using method of basic-technical indicators. The data have been collected from statistical center of Iran for firms with 10 or more employees during 2011-2014. In this regard, due to the large number of trade partners, 20 countries with more than 95% proportion in trade have been selected and the process of export and import of the virtual water was studied for them. The results show that the net virtual water export trend has had undesirable situation, where the net export of virtual water from -112 million m3 at 2011 have raised to 115 million m3 at 2014. In other words, the industrial sector has turned up to a net exporter of the virtual water. Also, the most import and export of the virtual water has allocated to United Arab Emirates and China with volume of 119 and 99 million m3, respectively. Hence, as policy implication, considering the water resources in industrial products trade is necessary.