Tehran, Iran, March 11
By Kamyar Eghbalnejad – Trend:
An Iranian official has criticized the country’s agriculture sector over its low level of productivity.
“The productivity level of Iran’s agriculture is far below the global average level,” Gholamhossein Shafei, the head of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines & Agriculture (ICCIMA) told reporters on Sunday.
Saying that Iranian farmers are farming various types of agricultural products on 9.6 million hectares of lands, he added that the value of the agricultural exports of the country is below $7 billion.
He further compared the productivity of agricultural sector in Iran with Malaysia saying the Asian country exports worth of $25 billion of agricultural products which are farmed on lands as large as 380,000 hectares.
According to the official statistics, the Islamic Republic exported 4.7 million tons of agricultural products worth of $4.542 billion during the first 10 months of the current fiscal year (starting March 20).
The agricultural products shared 4.5 percent of Iran’s overall non-oil exports in terms of volume and 12.3 percent in terms of value in the ten-month period.