Baku, Azerbaijan, March. 3
By Khalid Kazimov – Trend:
An Iranian agriculture official has said that the country would become self-sufficient in sugar production over the coming fiscal year (starting March 21).
Alireza Yazdani has said that the county does not need to import sugar over the coming year as Iran’s sugar beet output is expected to grow, IRINN News Network reported.
He added that Iranian farmers have planted sugar beet on a total of 17,000 hectares of land across the country, a surge of 88 percent over the past four years.
In the meantime, the southern province of Khouzestan accounts for the majority of sugar beet output in the country with 12,000 hectares of land farming the product. The autumn output of sugar beet in the province is expected to hit 900,000 tons.
Saying that the country produced about 8.1 million tons of sugar beet over the current fiscal year, he added that Iran’s total output of sugar has reached 1.95 million tons.
According to agriculture ministry, Iranians consume around 2.2 million tons of sugar per year.
Earlier in February, the ministry announced that its decision on banning the imports of sugar into the country which was imposed back in December 2017 is still on.
The ban was introduced due to the high volume of stored sugar and output of the country.