Tehran, Iran, June 4
By Kamyar Eghbalnejad- Trend:
An official with Iran’s Seafood Exporters Union said the government is mulling plans to directly export shrimp to China.
“We are in talks with relevant authorities to export potted shrimp to China and we plan to do this directly,” Hassan Ahmadi Jazani, the deputy head of Iran’s Seafood Exporters Union, told the Trend news agency on June 4.
He added, “China was a major importer of Iranian shrimps as it used to purchase 70 percent of the country’s shrimp”.
In the past, the Chinese imported the Iranian shrimps via ports of Vietnam, Ahmadi Jazani said, noting that Tehran is now seeking to deliver the small sea creatures to China directly as they can no longer use Vietnamese borders.
Iran produced some 20,000 tons of shrimps last year and this is expected to reach 30,000 in the current Iranian year (started March 21), he added.
“Once, Europe was a destination for Iranian shrimps, but it was later replaced with the UAE due to (banking) problems.”
The deputy head of Iran’s Seafood Exporters Union added that Iran is also experiencing the same problem with Dubai and that this can be settled if Europe helps facilitate banking and trade transactions under new circumstances.
Elsewhere in the interview, Ahmadi Jazani pointed to Russia’s market and said, “The problem with Russians is that they are interested in the wholesale trade and we cannot do wholesale under our normal exporting circumstances”.
He further said Iran and Russia need to open a letter of credit to boost their business transactions.
More than 82,450 tons of different kinds of seafood worth $283 million were exported from Iran in the nine months to Dec. 21, 2017, registering a 23 percent and 37 percent growth in weight and value respectively compared with the similar period of last year.
Shrimp culture in Iran is mainly practiced in the provinces of Khuzestan, Hormozgan, Sistan-Baluchestan, Bushehr in the south and Golestan in the north.
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