Mohammad Mir-Razavi, head of the wholesalers' food union, said the Iranian government is seeking to import tomatoes from China due to national shortages. "We have asked China to ship tomatoes to Iran," Mir-Razavi said on September 29. The reason for Iran’s shortages is that a large portion of its tomatoes has been exported to Iraq.
Iran exported 303,000 tons of tomato in the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 21) an issue that prompted the country’s Ministry of Industry, Mining and Trade to forbid the fruit’s exports as prices sharply increased.
Iraq, Russia, the UAE, Afghanistan and Qatar were the main customers of Iranian tomatoes during the period under review. According to en.trend.az Mir-Razavi noted that the Iranian Ministry acted late and should have forbidden the fruit’s exports earlier.