Baku, Azerbaijan, July 29
By Fatih Karimov - Trend: Rice worth $302 million was imported illegally to Iran in the first four months of the current Iranian fiscal year, started on March 21, said Ahmad Behhaq, head of the Iranian rice importers association.
"The imports were illegal and rice was smuggled into the country. We strongly disapprove of that," Iran 's Tasnim news agency quoted Behhaq as saying July 29.
He put the per capita consumption of rice in Iran at 40 kilograms and the country's total consumption at 3.2 million metric tons per year. He added that just 1.8 million metric tons of rice is produce by domestic farmers. So, around 1.4 million metric tons of rice should be imported annually, he said.
He pointed out that the 40 percent tariff on legal imports has stirred the smuggling of rice into the country.
Meanwhile, Iranian Deputy Agriculture Minister Abbas Keshavarz said on June 1 that the importation of rice was banned in the last month of the past Iranian fiscal year, ended on March 20.
Deputy Head of Imports Commission of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture Mohammad Reza Safa has said that the Iranian government has banned rice and sugar imports to support domestic producers.
"Iranian producers' production cannot meet domestic demands, and we need to import. But currently there is enough rice and sugar in the market, so we decided to ban imports," he said.
Some 235,000 metric tons of rice, worth $243 million, was imported in the first three months of the current Iranian fiscal year compared with 301,000 metric tons of rice, worth $374 million, which was imported in the same period last year, according to the Iran Customs Administration.
Edited by CN