NCRI – Iran’s dominance of the global saffron market is being threatened by production of artificial greenhouse crops in China, India and the UAE, the state-run INSA news agency has reported.
Ali Hosseini told state-run ISNA: “Growing saffron in a greenhouse increases its production, but at the same time its price and quality drops. Production in this way is a great threat to the Iranian saffron market.
“Also, artificial saffron produced in the UAE is a colored plant created by Indian experts which is sold for half the price of real saffron.”
Chinese customs have also reported the export of 6.5 million dollars of umbrellas to Iran in the first half of the year – double the figure for the previous year.
Struggling Iranian car manufacturers have also been buying cheap, low-grade Chinese car parts, being blamed for the building of sub-standard vehicles.
After despite the sanctions, China’s customs bureau also announced that it had purchased 397,261 barrels of oil per day from Iran in the month of July.
Another report also indicated that companies from China, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India registered record numbers of new businesses in Iran’s Chabahar Free Trade-Industrial Zone
Mostafa Malek-Zadeh announced on August 28 that the growth of internal and external investment in this region had increased by 100 per cent from the beginning of the new Iranian year (March 21).
