The Central Bank of Iran calls on Tehran to increase and diversify non-oil exports in a bid to ease the country's reliance on oil revenues.

"Iran's projected oil revenues will decrease by $54 billion if crude prices continue to fall," CBI Governor Mahmoud Bahmani said on Saturday on the sidelines of a local banking summit.

The financial crisis gripping Wall Street has hit Europe and Asia; stock markets across the world have plunged since the beginning of the economic turmoil.

Although the current global economic crisis has not directly affected Iran, declining crude prices have been a cause for concern for the world's fourth biggest crude producer as oil is the country's prime export.

Analysts believe the lack of confidence in the market paints investors a gloomy picture of the future and forces crude oil to mirror the stock market trading levels. Oil prices have almost halved since reaching a record high of above $147 a barrel in July.

According to Bahmani, the only way for Iran to cope with the currently projected consequences of the global financial crisis is to increase non-oil exports and ban imports of luxury and non-essential goods.

There is also the possibility of decreasing world oil production to meet the current low demand. OPEC President Chakib Khelil says oil-producing nations will considerably cut their crude output at an emergency meeting in Vienna.

"There will be a reduction in production at the next extraordinary meeting of OPEC, and it will have to be a substantial one to get the balance right between supply and demand," said Khelil on Saturday.

AKM/AA