Iran’s customs office (IRICA) says the country has shipped some 20,866 metric tons of rugs, including carpet, Kilim and Gabbeh, to 57 countries in the first four months of the current calendar year ending late June.
IRICA spokesman Rouhollah Latifi said that exports of various types of rugs, including the hand-woven Persian carpets, generated over $82 million in hard currency revenues between March 20 and July 21 this year.
That comes as Iranian carpet dealers have been unable to send their cargoes to the United States which was once a major destination for Iranian rug shipments.
Latifi said that more than 30 percent of Iranian carpet cargoes used to reach the US before 2018 when Washington imposed its unilateral sanctions on Iran.
He added that current major export destinations included neighboring countries of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, which collectively accounted for nearly a half of all shipments in the four-month period ending late July.
Latifi said Iranian Gabbeh, a variety of hand-woven Persian rug which has a coarse texture, is becoming increasingly popular in Japan.
Persian Gabbeh is a hand-knotted thick Persian rug with long pile. It is mostly made by the nomads of Fars province in southern Iran.
The official said that the Japanese even prefer Gabbeh over the traditional straw tatami because of its colors and motifs, adding that Iran’s Gabbeh exports to Japan in the four months to late June had generated nearly $2.4 million in revenues.
Iran has introduced various measures to encourage non-oil exports amid sanctions that limit the country’s sale of crude.
Official estimates suggest the government pocketed nearly $60 billion from exports of various goods and services from the start of the American sanctions in 2018 until the end of last calendar year in late March 2020.