Page 51 - IRANRptAug20

9.1.8​Agriculture & commodities sector news
An Iranian meat import investor is looking to create a lamb import route from Russia’s Siberian Transbaikal region, ZAB TV has reported.
Trade between Iran and Russia continues to expand despite the ongoing difficulties posed by crushing US sanctions aimed at Tehran and the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. Iran is increasingly relying on Russia for staple goods and services. Iran’s entry last October into a temporary two-year preferential trade agreement (PTA) with the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) bloc of states in eastern Europe and central Asia is helping to lift bilateral trade.
“A meeting was attended by a representative of [Russia’s] Sibiragro industry, which has Iranian assets. The investor intends to purchase lamb in Transbaikal, slaughter animals at local slaughtering sites and then send chilled meat to Iran,” said Minister of Agriculture of the Transbaikal Territory Denis Bochkarev, without identifying the investor.
In discussions on the planned export arrangement, the parties to the deal determined that it would be necessary to slaughter sheep in line with Iranian Sharia regulations, under the guidance of halal export rules.
“The importer said that the age of the sheep should be from six to 18 months and [the animals] should be 40 kilograms,” the Russian-language report added.
Russia’s Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Rosselkhoznadzor) has banned the import of 88 tonnes of “contaminated” fruit and vegetables from Azerbaijan and Iran into Dagestan in the North Caucasus, RIA reported on July 23.
The cost of agricultural produce grown in Azerbaijan and Iran is generally considerably cheaper compared to Russia but there is periodically news of consignments not making it over the border due to concerns raised by Rosselkhoznadzor.
The banned products included peaches, plums, cherries, tomatoes and fresh peppers. The cargoes were reportedly detained due to the detection of harmful pest western flower thrips, eastern moth and tomato moth.
The report added that cargo owners were charged with attempting to import non-standard goods.
Grain exports from Russia’s Volgograd region to Iran expanded by 30% y/y to 233,000 tonnes in the first five months of this year, a representative of the region’s agriculture committee informed TASS news agency.
Using the Caspian Sea transit route, Russia and Kazakhstan have become the main wheat and grain sources for Iran amid the ongoing collapse of the Iranian rial (IRR) and two years of US unilateral sanctions that have caused trade bottlenecks elsewhere.
“Because of the warm winter, in 2020, the shipment of grain to ships travelling from the region to Iran was continuous. From January 1 to June 1, 53 vessels were sent from the Volgograd elevator, 48 of them to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the quoted source at the committee said.
She added that in the first five months of the year, an overall 332,000 tonnes of grain have been exported from the Russian region, compared to 270,000 tonnes in the same period of 2019.
However, she noted that a number of other Russian regions did not systematically fulfil their agricultural product export plans for Iran and elsewhere despite getting sufficient orders.
51​ IRAN Country Report August 2020 www.intellinews.com