Page 54 - IRANRptDec21

Iran’s apple exports worth $237mn in last Persian year
Iran’s pistachio exports climb in Persian 1H but drought hits harvest
Iranian fruit exports to Russia ‘soar pushing out Uzbek
Top buyers were Hong Kong with 74,578 kilograms at $46.626mn; the United Arab Emirates with 59,791 kg valued at $33.942mn; Spain with 49,025 kg at $26.44mn; China with 40,139 kg at $22.504mn and Afghanistan with 33,781 kg at $19.168 mn.
Iran is one of the world’s top saffron producers. Over 90% of its production is exported.
Iran’s Planning and Budget Organization (PBO) and three of the country’s banks in early October last year reached an agreement to allocate Iranian rial (IRR) 10 trillion ($35.5mn at the free market rate) to support the saffron industry.
The banks were Agriculture Bank, Mellat Bank and Export Development Bank of Iran. The interest rate of the facilities was set at 18%, with PBO agreeing to pay 3%.
Iran earned $326.7mn from apple exports in the last Persian calendar year (ended March 20), with the export volume amounting to 884,798 tonnes, according to Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA) data.
Iranian apple exports amounted to 207,257 tonnes worth $62.6mn in the first quarter of the current Persian year (March 21-June 21), the figures also showed.
Breaking down the exports consigned in the last Persian year, the data showed Iraq bought applies worth $105mn, Russia $95.4mn, Afghanistan $51.7mn, India $26.6mn and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) $21.1mn. These countries, the top five export buyers, were followed by Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Oman, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Qatar, Armenia, Kuwait, Georgia, Syria, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Libya, Bahrain, Uzbekistan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Norway and the UK, in that order.
This year has brought reports of Kashmiri apple traders complaining that apples from Iran were being imported and marketed as Afghan produce. Food and agricultural products accounted for 17.6% of Iran’s non-oil export earnings of $34.5bn in the last Persian year, IRICA said.
Iran exported 63,000 tonnes of pistachios in the first half of the current Persian calendar year (March 21-September 22), marking an increase of 8,000 tonnes y/y, Mehr News Agency reported on October 20.
The shipments brought in revenues of $426mn, the agriculture ministry was cited as saying.
Despite the raised export volume, the Iran Pistachio Association (IPA) noted that because of poor growing conditions experienced this year, the country was set to record a harvest decline of 70,000 tonnes year on year. The main cause was said to be drought, which the IPA suggested had also damaged pistachio trees important to the 2022 harvest.
“Iran Pistachio Association will announce the exact statistics of pistachio production this year after the end of the harvest in the eighth Iranian calendar month of Aban (October 23-November 21), but our estimate is that output will be 140,000-150,000 tonnes”, Hossein Rezaei, secretary-general of the IPA, was reported as saying.
Around one-fifth of pistachio production in Iran is consumed domestically. The major export destinations for Iranian pistachios this calendar year were recorded as India, China and the United Arab Emirates.
Iran exported a record volume of fruit and nuts worth $196mn to the Russian Federation in the first nine months of 2021, with the export value up 1.5-fold y/y, east-fruit.com has reported. As Iranian fruit traders made
54 IRAN Country Report December 2021 www.intellinews.com