Some 5,400 tons of hand-woven Persian carpets worth $424 million were exported from Iran in the last fiscal year (ended March 20, 2018), registering an increase of 18.11% in value compared to the year before, statistics from the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration show.
Persian hand-woven carpets are exported to about 80 countries.
The United States, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Lebanon, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Japan are traditional buyers of Iranian carpets.
Hamid Kargar, chairman of Iran National Carpet Center, said new customers have emerged in recent years, namely China, Russia, South Africa and some Latin American countries, IRNA reported.
International economic sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear energy program have hampered Iran’s carpet industry.
With the removal of sanctions as of early 2016 though, as part of the nuclear deal Iran signed with the world powers a year earlier, trade began to normalize.
For instance, exports to the US, the biggest buyers of Iranian handmade carpets before the imposition of sanctions (importing $80 million annually), resumed after five to six years of “zero” shipments to the country.
Iran remains the biggest carpet exporter in the world.
According to Kargar, more than 3 million square meters of handmade carpets are annually woven in Iran, two-thirds of which are exported and the rest meets domestic demand.