Azerbaijan, Baku, Sep.17/ Trend R.Zamanov
Iran's rice import in the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year, which started on March 21, is more than the country's annual need to import rice, the director of the Iranian rice producers association, Jamil Alizadeh Shayeq said on Tuesday.
"Iran has imported 930,000 tons of rice in the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year," the Fars News Agency quoted Alizadeh Shayeq as saying.
"It is while the country only needs to import 600,000 tons of rice annually," Shayeq said.
"Some 2.25 million tons of rice was produced in the county in the previous year. So by importing 930,000 tons in the first five months of the current year, the total amount of Iran's stored rice has reached 3.18 million tons," he added.
"Importing such a large amount of rice will certainly make a disorder in the market," Shayeq said.
"If the current trend continues, the country's imports would be way more than domestic needs and that will cause great problems for the domestic rice farmers," he added.
In December 2012, Mehdi Kaboli, an official with the country's Agricultural Jihad Ministry, said that annual rice consumption in Iran stands around 2.8 million tons.
Iran plans to reach self-sufficiency in rice production during the next three years.
According to the Agriculture Jihad Ministry's plan, Iran was supposed to reach self-sufficiency in the rice production field by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2013), but the officials recently announced the plan needs some more 3 years to be completed, according to ISNA.
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