Sugar Self-Sufficiency Within Four Years

The government aims to achieve self-sufficiency in sugar production by 2021, the head of Public Relations Center with the Ministry of Agriculture said. Shahrokh Ramezan-Nejad added that this goal will be achieved through the autumn cultivation of sugarbeet and increasing productivity, ILNA reported. A ceremony was held at the headquarters of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture in Tehran on July 30 to celebrate the record high production of sugar in the last Iranian year (March 2016-17), which reached 1.65 million tons. According to ICCIMA, as reported by its news portal www.otaghiranonline.ir, this amount of sugar production is unprecedented in the last 120 years. Bahman Danaei, secretary of Iran Guild Union for Sugar and Sugar Cube Factories, said the record production indicates Iran is able to meet 75% of its demand for sugar through domestic production. Iranians consume between 2.2 and 2.4 million tons of sugar a year and last year an import of over 550,000 tons of the product was needed.