Press TV - Foreign direct investment (FDI) to Iran declined over the past calendar year to stand at $854 million, says a new report.

Figures published on Sunday by the semi-official ISNA news agency showed that FDI was down by nearly 22.5 percent in the year ending March 19 from $1.102 billion reported over the previous 12-month period.

The report said the number of approved FDI schemes in Iran declined by a single digit to 82, adding that launching tobacco processing companies was the most popular field of activity for foreign investors in the country.

It said a bulk of the investment, around 98 percent, had been attracted to industrial plans and the rest had come to trade and mining projects.

The report said that the province of Zanjan, which borders the capital province of Tehran, hosted the highest number of projects launched and funded by the foreigners, adding that some 18 percent of the total investment had been attracted to the province.

It added that the United Arab Emirates topped the list of countries with highest FDI to Iran with around 30 percent of the total yearly investment.

An earlier report by ISNA had shown that the Netherlands, China, Turkey and Germany had followed the UAE in list of countries with highest amount of FDI to Iran over the past calendar year.

The report, published last month, showed that almost half of the FDI schemes in Iran had been owned and operated by foreign investors and the rest had been carried out in the form of joint ventures.

The decline in FDI to Iran comes as the government has introduced various incentives for facilitating foreign investment into the country.

Those incentives have been offered to offset the impacts of a series of American sanctions that have made it difficult for foreign investors to freely operate in Iran.