Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 22
By Farhad Daneshvar – Trend:
Although the latest official statistics by the agriculture ministry of Iran suggest that the volume of the country’s dairy exports has dropped by five percent, a deputy agriculture minister says the figure has surged by 30 percent.
Hassan Rokni, the deputy agriculture minister of Iran, has said that the volume of exports of dairy products over the first nine months of the current fiscal (starting March 20) has jumped by 30 percent.
"More than 750,000 tons of dairy products over the first nine months have been exported from the country, indicating a rise of 30 percent year on year," the deputy minister told the state-run radio.
However, the planning and economic department of the agriculture ministry, through its latest statistical report has suggested that the volume of the exports of dairy products in the mentioned period fell by 4.96 percent to stand at 292, 500 tons.
According to the statistics, the value of the exports in the mentioned period grew by 5.32 percent to reach $500.8 million.
This is while the country imported 36,230 tons of agricultural products worth of $189.3 million over the nine-month period, indicating a drop of 20 percent in volume terms and a fall of seven percent in value terms.