TEHRAN - Head of Iran’s Agricultural Mechanization Development Center (AMDC) says 15 trillion rials (about $357.1 million) has been invested in the field of agricultural machinery since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2019).

Speaking in a press conference on Saturday, Kambiz Abbasi said currently 95 percent of the country’s required agricultural machinery is supplied by domestic producers.

“Only in [the last calendar year of] 1398 (March 2018-March 2019) 13,100 tractors and 300 combine harvesters were received by the country’s farmers,” he added.

Abbasi criticized the recent increases in the price of agricultural machinery and said: “In the past year, the prices of domestically produced agricultural machinery witnessed an increase of between 50-85 percent while the increase in the prices of imported machinery was even higher.”

The official pointed to some of the problems that the manufacturers of agricultural machinery are facing in the country, saying "the tires of the agricultural machinery are fully supplied by imports, and many manufacturers now have a shortage of tires to complete their production line." 

He further called on the Industry Ministry to resolve this problem as soon as possible.

Back in August 2019, Abbasi said the government allocated two trillion rials (about $47.6 million) for agricultural mechanization.

According to Abbasi, more than 82 trillion rials (about $1.95 billion) of investment has been attracted in this area in the past six years.

In the past forty years, since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has witnessed a remarkable improvement in various sectors and the agriculture industry has been one of the areas in which the country has undergone huge development.

Implementing billions of dollars worth of development, research and educational projects across the country is an indication of the significant improvements in this sector.

EF/MA