Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb.1 / Trend F.Milad /
Islamabad stopped importing Iranian apples during the past month, Seyyed Reza Noorani, deputy head of Iran Exports Confederation said.
The country still exports rice and tangerines to Iran, the Fars News Agency quoted Noorani as saying.
The head of Iran's fruits and vegetables sellers union said last month that Iran's fruit exports have faced 30 per cent drop from the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2012) in comparison with the same period last year.
Iran needs to work on the packaging in order to boost its fruits exports, the ISNA News Agency quoted Mostafa Darayinejad as saying.
"Turkey is becoming a great exporter of fruits in the region, decreasing Iran's share of exports," he added.
This is after Iranian Agriculture Jihad Minister Sadeq Khalilian said last month that the country's agricultural products exports faced a 13 per cent increase in the first seven months of Iranian Calendar year, the IRNA News Agency reported.
He went on to note that Iran is registering a new record in agricultural product output this year.
Iran's fruit export value is expected to reach two billion dollars in the current calendar year, Khalilian added.
Iran exported over 1.131 billion dollars' worth of agricultural products in the previous calendar year. The value of these exports was $64.1 billion more than the imports of the past calendar year which ended on March 19.
Iran is the Middle East and North Africa's greatest producer of garden products and ranks eighth or ninth in the world, an official with the Ministry of Agricultural Jihad said on October 22.
Iran has been ranked between eighth and tenth in global fruit production in different years. In the production of pomegranates and pistachios Iran ranks first, in dates and cherries third and fourth in the production of apples and walnuts and seventh in producing citrus fruits. 50 kinds of fruits are grown in the country.
The record for pomegranate production is 100 tons per hectare of land, 146 tons for apples and 70 tons for oranges.
Mohammad Talebi, the managing director of the Agricultural Bank of Iran, announced in November that Iran inaugurated 4724 agricultural projects during the first six months of the current Iranian calendar year which began March 20, creating more than 13,656 direct and indirect jobs.
The projects are in the areas of water and soil management, animal husbandry, natural resources, agricultural industries, research and development, Talebi said.
