Trade destinations of livestock products and inputs from Iran¹

This study examines the direction of Iranian trade in livestock products and inputs based on destination-wise Iranian trade data pertaining to years 1997–2006 with the purpose to provide comprehensive information on the trade partners in livestock trade of Iran. The analysis was carried out for the overall period 1997–2006 and two sub-periods, quinquennium ending (QE) 2001 (1997–2001) and QE2006 (2002–2006). The information would be useful to various stakeholders like, business entities, policy makers and animal scientists.

The Iranian import and export basket comprises of both, livestock products and inputs, with predominant share of former. Iran imported the selected livestock commodities for at least one year from 86 countries and exported them to 100 countries during the span of ten years considered in the study. The principal suppliers of livestock product and inputs to Iran were countries from European Union and Oceania. Since the transportation is more difficult in case of bovine animals, Iran was depending basically only on the border country of Pakistan. The requirement of bovine semen by Iran was chiefly met through imports from North America.

Besides, bovine semen, even vaccines for veterinary medicines were supplied to Iran from Puerto Rico & Virginia Island. There was emergence of some new suppliers to Iran, such as, Bahrain, Hungry, Belgium and Bulgaria. The Iranian exports and re-exports were mostly confined to the neighbouring member nations of Economic Cooperation Organization. India and China were also regular buyers of Iranian livestock products, especially wool. UAE had a sizeable share in Iranian imports and exports of livestock products. UAE has been serving as a conduit of re-exporting products to Iran after importing them from countries that have weak trade relations with Iran, mostly due to political reasons. Similarly, Iranian products have been reaching out to some markets through UAE rather than direct exports.