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Iran's GDP rises 6.7pc on higher crude oil prices

"Based on preliminary estimates of the central bank, Iran's economy in the first six months of the year has continued to grow, compared to the same period last year," it said.

Iran— the world's fourth-largest crude oil exporter — has benefited from high oil prices in recent years but is struggling with steadily climbing inflation, which reached 19.1 per cent in the year to November 22.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005 promising to share out Iran's oil wealth more fairly, but critics have accused his government of profligate spending of petrodollars, fuelling price rises.

Pipeline project: Meanwhile, Iran said yesterday that the petroleum ministers of India and Pakistan would come to Teheran later this month to discuss a multi-billion dollar project to transport Iranian gas to India via Pakistan.

“We have invited the Indian petroleum minister with the Pakistanis to come here and they have accepted,” Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari told a news conference yesterday. “We are making efforts to make it a tripartite deal or it will become a bilateral one,” he said, adding that talks were due to be held between February 14 to 16.

In November 2007, Iran gave India a four-month deadline to agree its participation after finalising the content of the $7.4 billion gas export deal with Pakistan. Talks on the project to supply gas to India and Pakistan through a 2,600-kilometre pipeline began in 1994.