About 1.3 million tons of dates are produced in the country annually, 70 percent of which is used in the country for domestic consumption while the other 30 percent is exported overseas, the head of the Iranian National Dates Association said.
The director general of Iran’s Ministry of Agriculture for tropical- and semi-tropical fruits highlighted the growth in the export of tropical fruits in the country last year.
He put the volume of dates exported from the country in the previous year at 390,000 tons, valued at $345 million, Mehr news agency reported.
Iran’s date production volume rose from 1,596,790 tons to 1,658,560 tons in the previous Iranian calendar year, showing a four percent decline compared to a year before, Zahra Jalili Moghadam noted.
Earlier, the chairman of the Iranian National Date Association said Iran is the third-largest producer of fresh dates in the world.
Mohsen Rashid Farrokhi pointed out that Iran exported $270 million of fresh dates to foreign countries in the first 10 months of the Iranian calendar year 1402 (March 21, 2023- January 20, 2024).