Market brief
Iran
The authorities that procure water infrastructure in Iran, how the deals are put together, and what is in the pipeline.
Reference profile for IranMarket snapshot
The commercial picture in Iran: the scale of the economy and the water sector, the investment climate, and where the near-term activity is concentrated.
Political stability
World Bank Governance Indicators, 2024. Percentile among all countries; higher is more stable.
Investment climate
World Bank Governance Indicators, 2024. Regulatory quality for private investment; higher is better.
Financing & PPP
- PPP frameworkEmerging
- Tracked pipelineUS$ 6.3 bn in our projects register
- Active fundersDomestic finance, National Development Fund
- Climate adaptation planIn preparation
Opportunities
- Gulf & Oman-Sea desalination and conveyance
- Aquifer recharge & subsidence control
- Irrigation efficiency at scale
- Wetland restoration
Key challenges
- Severe groundwater depletion & land subsidence
- Drying wetlands (Lake Urmia)
- Very high agricultural water use
- Inter-basin transfer controversies
Sources: FAO AQUASTAT / national reports (latest available); World Bank 2023–24. Figures approximate. Governance indicators: World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators (2024).
Contracting authorities
The bodies that commission, regulate and operate water infrastructure in Iran. Ministries set policy and sign the offtake; utilities run the assets; regulators set the tariff and the service standard.
- Ministry of Agriculture-JahadMinistry
- Ministry of Energy (water & wastewater affairs)Ministry
- National Water & Wastewater Engineering Co. (Abfa)Utility
- Provincial Water & Wastewater Companies (Abfa)Utility
- Iran Water Resources Management Co.Basin & resources authority
- Department of EnvironmentEnvironment
How deals are structured
The framework in Iran is Emerging, the schemes we track carry US$ 6.3 bn of disclosed value, and the funders most active in the sector are Domestic finance, National Development Fund.
Delivery splits by asset class across the region: dams and trunk conveyance are mostly engineering contracts carried by sovereign or development-bank finance; bulk supply increasingly uses build-operate-transfer concessions against a long-term offtake; and distribution work is let as performance-based contracts paid against measured leakage reduction. The Finance & Economics hub sets out each model and where it has been used.
How to bid
There is no procurement market here that a foreign bidder can enter, and it is worth saying plainly rather than describing a framework as emerging. A domestic offtake market does exist: most Iranian desalination plants are built and operated privately and sell to the Ministry of Energy on long-term contracts, 95 plants totalling 634,000 cubic metres a day with 75 operating, at a production cost reported at about 98,000 rials a cubic metre with government reimbursement.1 The counterparties are Iranian and so is the capital.
| Offtake counterparty | The Ministry of Energy, with the national water and wastewater company and the provincial companies below it.1 |
|---|---|
| Route | Domestic. Projects are financed from the budget and the development fund and built by Iranian contractors and consortia. No open tender a foreign contractor can bid, no pre-qualification portal and no published standard concession were found. |
| Sanctions | United States regulations prohibit a US person from supplying goods, technology or services to Iran or its government, from new investment in Iran or in property owned or controlled by the government, and from facilitating a foreign person’s transaction. An offtaker that is a ministry is by definition a government counterparty, so any US person in the chain, whether lender, insurer, parent, dollar-clearing bank or supplier of US-origin membranes, engages those prohibitions.3 |
| Tariff | The budget law levies 2,000 rials a cubic metre within the household consumption standard and 4,000 above it, earmarked for the national water and wastewater company. That is a levy on top of a provincial retail tariff which is not published centrally.2 |
European restrictive measures were not checked and nothing here should be read as advice on them. The foreign investment statute is often cited as the channel for foreign capital, but its text was not obtainable and no water project using it was identified, so it is not described here.
Regulatory intelligence
| Regulation | Status | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| First post-revolution water law | Under-enforced | 1982 | Public ownership of water; Ministry of Energy allocates and permits use. |
| Urmia Lake Restoration Programme | Partial success | 2013– | Rights purchases, efficiency, inflow recovery. |
| Groundwater rescue plan | Stalled | — | Well closures and smart meters, unevenly applied. |
| Seventh Development Plan, Article 40 | Guideline drafted | 2026 | Hands farm water management to farmer organisations. |
| National Climate Change Management Plan | Adopted | 2025 | Resilience in water and agriculture. |
| Helmand treaty (with Afghanistan) | Strained | 1973 | 26 m³/s entitlement, disputed deliveries. |
Institutional picture simplified; conditions vary by province.
Projects
Tracked schemes in Iran, largest first. Each has its own page with the parties, the finance and a dated history.
37 tracked in total. The full set, filterable, is in the major projects register.
Track record
What has actually been signed in Iran, from the awards log and the major projects register.
| Year | Project | Winning firms | US$ m |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 on line | Bandar Abbas Desalination | Shaya Co., joint venture of Farab, Tana Energy Management, TIV Energy and Machine Sazy Vijeh | 400 |
| 2015 on line | Sarni Dam and Water Supply Scheme | National Building Company (dam body); Payab Kousar (diversion tunnel); Zhian | n/a |
| 2013 on line | Bushehr Desalination | NVCo, with design and equipment by Axiom and B2A of Austria | n/a |
| 2011 on line | Chabahar Desalination | NVCo, with design and equipment by Axiom and B2A of Austria | n/a |
| 2004 on line | Tehran Fifth Water Treatment Plant | Peyman Ab Gostar for civil works and Machine Sazi Vijeh for equipment | n/a |
| 2002 on line | Seymareh Dam and Hydroelectric Plant | Fab, Fab International, Tabiye, Parhon Tarh, Payab Kousar, Ziggurat and Moataber | n/a |
| 2001 on line | Gotvand Olya Dam and Hydroelectric Plant | Farab | n/a |
| 1995 on line | Karun 3 Dam and Hydroelectric Plant | Farab (electromechanical and hydromechanical EPC); Sabir Construction, Boland Payeh and Tableh on civil works | n/a |
| 1991 on line | Karkheh Dam and Hydroelectric Plant | Farab (electromechanical and hydromechanical EPC); Harbin turbines and Alstom generators | n/a |
| 1991 on line | Masjed Soleyman Dam and Hydroelectric Plant | Farab (EPC for both phases); Harbin and Voith turbines; ABB and GE generators; Azer Ab | n/a |
| 1984 on line | Tehran Fourth Water Treatment Plant (Tehranpars) | Degremont of France, designer and contractor | n/a |
| 1974 on line | Lar Dam and Kalan Transfer Scheme | KSB, Germany | n/a |
| 1967 on line | Tehran Third Water Treatment Plant (Tehranpars) | Degremont of France, designer and contractor | n/a |
| 1963 on line | Tehran Second Water Treatment Plant (Kan) | Degremont of France, designer and contractor | n/a |
Years without a label are award years from the curated log; rows marked on line are dated by commissioning, from the projects register. 19 rows in total for Iran.
Repeat winners
- Degremont of France, designer and contractor4 tracked awards
- Farab2 tracked awards
- NVCo, with design and equipment by Axiom and B2A of Austria2 tracked awards
Firms or consortia appearing on two or more tracked awards in Iran.
Pipeline & tenders
Structured procurements and live tenders in Iran, drawn from the same review that maintains the pipeline tracker.
Pipeline & awards
Tenders
Prices
What households pay
| Household tariff (US$/m³) | Cost of supply (US$/m³) | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| levy only | ~$0.35 | 2025 | Clause (ت) of Note 7 of the 1404 budget law, as reported; Tehran Times for the production cost |
The budget law sets an earmarked levy of IRR 2,000/m³ of drinking water sold within the household consumption standard and IRR 4,000 above it, collected for the national water and wastewater company. That sits on top of a retail tariff set province by province, which is not published centrally. Desalination production cost has been given as about IRR 98,000/m³.
Residential tariffs, and the cost of supply where a utility publishes it, are kept in one place for the whole region so the comparison holds: a tariff means little without the cost it is measured against.
Watch list
No dated items have been carried forward for Iran yet. This section fills from the monthly briefings as they are published.
Sources
8 references
Project, pipeline and tender records are compiled from procurer announcements, lender disclosures and trade reporting; each project page carries its own source and the date it was last checked. Institutions are from the decision-maker directory. Economic and water indicators are cited on the reference profile.
- Tehran Times, “75 water desalination plants operating across Iran”, 2 August 2022.
- Etemad Online, on the water charge set in the 1404 budget law, 3 December 2024.
- United States Treasury, 31 CFR part 560, subpart B: Iranian transactions and sanctions regulations, prohibitions.
- FAO, AQUASTAT — Global Information System on Water and Agriculture: country water resources, withdrawals by sector and dam register. fao.org/aquastat. Latest country values as compiled at build.
- World Bank, World Development Indicators and country water-sector reporting. data.worldbank.org.
- Kaufmann & Kraay, Worldwide Governance Indicators (World Bank), 2024 update — political-stability and regulatory-quality scores, 0–100, shown in the market snapshot. worldbank.org/wgi.
- World Resources Institute, Aqueduct 4.0 Water Risk Atlas (2023) — the sub-basin risk, stress and groundwater-decline layers on the interactive maps. wri.org/aqueduct.
- MENA Water Review major projects register and PPP pipeline — compiled from procurer publications, development-bank project pages and trade reporting; each record names its source.
Numbered references are linked from the superscript markers in the text. Figures without a marker come from the sources above as compiled in the site methodology.