Tehran, Iran, May 26
By Kamyar Eghbalnejad - Trend:
An official with Iran’s Tea Factories Syndicate said the country has no plans to export tea for the time being as it is still low in price.
Given the low price of Iranian tea in the domestic market, tea exports would not be economically viable at this point, Mohammad Sadeq Hassani told the Trend news agency on May 26.
Iran exported about 14,658 tons of tea, each kilo worth about $1.32, last year (March 21- 2017-2018), he said, adding that this is while the country imported tea mainly from India and Kenya with each kilo costing $4.86.
Hassani further said the export of tea is expected to resume in the second six months of the Iranian calendar year and that countries like Azerbaijan, Russia, Afghanistan, Germany, and the Netherlands will be among the major destinations of the Iranian tea.
Elsewhere in the interview, the official referred to the country’s current banking problems, saying that the syndicate last year had paid for its tea trade via exchange offices not banks.
Tea is cultivated in northern Iran where 50,000 families earn their living from tea farming on more than 25,000 hectares of fields.
Close to 95% of tea orchards in Iran are rain-fed. About 110,000 tons of dried tea are consumed in Iran every year.
Iran imports tea from India, the UAE, Sri Lanka and Kenya.
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