Representatives from a number of Irish companies keen to invest in Iran’s information and communications technology (ICT) market will visit the country to pick Iranian firms for cooperation, an official said.

According to Nasser Ali Sa’adat, the Irish delegation is going to visit Iran in May in the pursuit of investment opportunities in the ICT market.

The Iranian official also noted that negotiations are underway with companies from the other countries, such as Bulgaria, Canada, France and Italy, in order to match foreign investors with appropriate domestic partners.

There has been growing enthusiasm for trade with Iran after implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a lasting nuclear deal between Tehran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany).

The deal came into force on January 16, terminating all nuclear-related sanctions on Iran.

Back in December 2015, Sweden’s Minister for Enterprise and Innovation Mikael Damberg had also voiced the European country’s eagerness to boost investment in Iran’s ICT market.

ICT Deputy Minister Nasrollah Jahangard said Iranians have developed 70,000 mobile applications in the last year and a half, calling for the teaching of programming languages in Iran’s universities.

Nasrollah Jahangard, Deputy Minister for Communications and Information Technology, made the remark in the closing ceremony of Sharif Codecup on Friday, while deeming the IT market in Iran ‘rapidly expanding’.

“The third and fourth generations of mobile telecommunications and the ability to upload information have caused a complete metamorphosis in the country’s IT market,” he said.

Jahangard went on to add, “the country’s ICT market share is about $85 million, the major part of which is dedicated to telecommunications technologies.”

The software’s share of the market is currently very scant, but this process is rapidly expanding, he added.

“The IT industry holds about 2.5 per cent share of the country’s GDP, but we predict that this share will increase at least two-fold over the next five years,” he said.

Jahangard went on to add, “currently, the predicted share of ICT market in Iran is worth over $29 billion that can have 20-30 percent growth given the rapid development in the fields of software, application and content.”