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Iran
Non-Oil Exports
In 1985 the government announced its new goal of doubling non-oil
exports in 1986. Although the value of non-oil exports increased
70 percent between March and June 1986, this increase shrank to
59 percent by August 1986. Because inflation had reduced the value
of non-oil exports, the government abandoned its goal for non-oil
exports.
Despite government encouragement, non-oil exports in 1985 accounted
for only 10 percent of total exports. Industrial and mineral exports
together accounted for 25 percent of the value of non-oil exports
in 1985 but only 5 percent in 1986. The export of manufactured
goods and cotton also declined appreciably as a result of the
war. A further 25 percent of non-oil export income came from carpets
and fruit. Carpet exports were the exception to the overall downturn
in non-oil exports in 1985. Carpet exports more than tripled from
1985 to 1986, but as carpet output increased, prices on the international
market fell.
The other key non-oil export was agricultural produce. Some agricultural
exports increased in FY 1986, whereas industrial exports continued
to decline. Official figures showed that agricultural exports
were up in value 46 percent for the period March-August 1986,
as compared with the same period during the preceding fiscal year.
This figure is misleading, however, because there was a decline
in the ratio of the value of agricultural exports to agricultural
imports. In the mid- 1980s, the agricultural sector operated at
a subsistence level, growing food primarily to feed the general
population and producing for export only the financially lucrative
cash crops whose production varied according to seasonal fluctuations
in rainfall. A halting though generally upward trend in the production
and export of cash crops began just before the Revolution.
Fruit and vegetable exports increased in 1986 as a result of
good weather, a big market in the Persian Gulf area for fresh
produce, and incentives to grow and market cash crops, whose prices
the government did not regulate. Fruit and vegetable exports accounted
for 30 percent of the country's non-oil exports in the first half
of FY 1987. Previously, fruit had not exceeded 5 percent of total
non-oil exports.
Bumper crops of pistachios sold at the international market rate
and bumper crops of fruit and vegetables were the only exceptions
to a general decline in agricultural production. Production of
pistachios was so competitive that the United States Department
of Commerce imposed a 318-percent duty on imports of Iranian roasted
pistachios in the fall of 1986, causing a decline in exports to
the United States.
Through 1986, Iranian caviar exports in the 1980s fluctuated
between US$20 million and US$40 million. In 1986 the exports were
worth only about US$20 million. That year, Iran sought to recapture
the Italian market (estimated at US$900,000 annually) from the
Soviet Union. Iran had sold only US$100,000 worth of caviar (about
11 percent of the market) to Italy in 1985.
Data as of December 1987
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