About 1.2 million tons of different types of dates have been produced so far in Iran in the current fiscal year (started March 20), almost as much as that of last year, the chairman of the National Association of Iranian Dates announced.
“Exports have been hampered by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, we expect to export between 15% and 20% of our overall output by the end of the current Iranian year [March 20, 2021],” Mohsen Rashid Farrokhi was also quoted as saying by Young Journalists Club.
North American and European Union countries, as well as Russia, India and China, are the main destinations for Iranian dates.
Rouhollah Latifi, spokesman of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration, has said that 238,152 tons of dates worth $211.64 million were exported from Iran to 85 countries in the last Iranian year (March 2019-20), ILNA reported.
Zahra Jalili Moqaddam, an Agriculture Ministry official, said Iran is the world’s second biggest producer of dates with an annual production of around 1.2 million tons that accounts for 10% of the global output.
Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Pakistan, Algeria, Iraq, Sudan, Oman and Libya are top 10 producers of dates in the world. Egypt has the biggest production volume and Algeria has the biggest area of land under date cultivation.
"Iran is the biggest exporter of dates in the world," Farrokhi had earlier told Financial Tribune in an interview, noting that Egypt ranks second, with Saudi Arabia and Tunisia sharing the third spot on the export front.
A large variety of dates are produced in six Iranian provinces, namely Kerman, Sistan-Baluchestan, Khuzestan, Hormozgan, Bushehr and Fars. This year, production from Kerman, Sistan-Baluchestan and Khuzestan accounted for 800,000 tons of the total output (70%).
