The submission of orders for sugar imports to meet the domestic demand will commence by mid-November, a member of the board of representatives of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce said.
Mehdi Rasekh said, “Considering the sugarcane harvest season coming to an end in just a few weeks, and having 500,000 tons of sugar stored across the country, submission of import orders to supply sugar will commence in mid-November,” Eghtesad News reported Thursday.
He added that the decision is final and Iran will not import sugar until the end of this year (March 2015).
Sugar is extracted from sugar beet and sugarcane, and harvest season starts from September; therefore, production goes underway from late September, according to Raskeh.
He asserted that the volume of sugar production is enough to meet the current domestic consumption.
“If sugar imports are to be allowed by reasonable tariffs, it should not hurt domestic production,” he said, insisting that imports should be banned in cold seasons to reinforce domestic production.
He stressed that national sugar production is enough to save the country from imports in the second half of the present Iranian calendar year (September 2014–March 2015), he said.
Annual sugar consumption in Iran is estimated at around 2 million tons. Production is expected to reach 1.1 million tons by the end of the year.
Brazil, India, France and the US are among the biggest producers and exporters of sugar in the world, whereas Iran, Japan and Nigeria are some of the major importers of the basic commodity. Iran imported 2.4 million tons of sugar in 2006, highest in the past decade.
