Grower Subsidies Sustain Tea
Tea covered hill garden in Iran
IRAN
Sanctions limiting Iran’s ability to purchase tea encouraged domestic production which has increased by 15% in 2019.
Habibollah Jahansaz, the head of Iran Tea Organization, reports that 22,185 tons of dried tea have been produced from an estimated 98,500 metric tons of fresh leaf, as reported by the IANA wire service.
The tea is valued at $23.96 million. The full-year harvest is estimated to reach between 115,000 and 120,000 metric tons by year-end resulting in 26,000 metric tons of processed tea.
The government has so far purchased $61.4 million of tea. The latest round of subsidies allocates $46.1 million to growers.
“At present, some 200,000 people in Iran have found direct employment in the tea industry. There are 178 related factories across the country,” Ja-hansaz told IANA.
In September Sri Lanka, in defiance of the US sanctions, closed a petroleum-for-tea swap with Iran. Ceylon Petroleum Corp. currently owes Iran around $250 million for oil, a debt that cannot be paid in US dollars. As a work-around revenue generated from the exportation of tea to Iran will be tallied against what is owed for oil.