Iran recorded an agrifood trade deficit of $2.8 billion in the first 10 months of the current Iranian year (March 21, 2018-Jan. 20), which shows a 10.5% improvement year-on-year.
The figures were announced by the latest report of the National Agriculture and Water Strategic Research Center, which draws on data provided by the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration.
More than 5.7 million tons of agricultural and food products worth $5.46 billion were exported from Iran during the 10-month period to register a 1.1% fall in value compared with last year's corresponding period.
Agrifood exports accounted for 6% and 15% of the total volume and value of Iran's non-oil exports of 99.3 million tons worth $35.61 billion respectively over the period, the news portal of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture reported.
The exports mainly included fruits worth $1.2 million, vegetables worth $1.03 billion, milk and dairy products worth $511 million, saffron worth $294 million and fish and shrimps worth $277 million, accounting for 22%, 19%, 9.4%, 5.4% and 5.1% of the total value of agrifood exports during the 10 months respectively.
Iraq, Afghanistan, the UAE, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, Turkmenistan and Germany were the biggest export destinations in a descending order, as around 77% of Iran’s agrifood exports went to these nine countries.
Iraq was the biggest export destination and the UAE was the biggest exporter to Iran
Each ton of agrifood exports was valued at $932 on average, which is 143% more than the price of each ton of non-oil exports ($383) over the period.
The import of agrifood products during the same period stood at 15.91 million tons valued at more than $8.35 billion, which shows a 4.6% decline in value year-on-year.
Imports accounted for 61.2% and 23.4% of the total volume and value of Iran’s total non-oil imports of 30.49 million tons worth $42.8 billion respectively.
The main imported agrifood products during the period included corn ($1.64 billion), rice ($1.1 billion), soybeans ($975 million), vegetable oils ($786 million), red meat ($625 million), barley ($479 million) oilcake ($506 million) and fruits ($334 million) accounting for 19.6%, 13.3%, 11.7%, 9.4%, 7.5%, 6.1%, 5.5% and 4% of all agrifood imports during the nine months respectively.
The above-mentioned products accounted for 77.3% of the total value of agrifood imports over the period.
The biggest exporters to Iran were the UAE ($827 million), India ($797 million), Switzerland ($677 million), Singapore ($627 million), the Netherlands ($581), Russia ($437 million), Turkey ($427 million), the UK ($350 million), Brazil ($323million), Pakistan ($219 million) and Germany ($208 million).
The above-mentioned countries accounted for nearly 79.3% of Iran's total agrifood imports.
Each ton of agrifood imports was valued at around $525, which was 62% less than the price for each ton of imported non-oil products during the same period ($1,372).
