KUALA LUMPUR – The Covid-19 pandemic and prolonged lockdowns have significantly affected international trade among countries worldwide for more than a year now.
However, despite the known uncertainties, Iran continues to boost palm oil imports with a significant growth for the January-to-May period this year, compared to the same period in 2020.
According to the latest data, Iran tops the list for palm oil import volume this year among nine other Middle Eastern countries in the region.
The statistics show Iran imported a total of 309,704 metric tons of palm oil from January to May this year, seeing a whopping five-fold growth in comparison to last year’s 63,039 metric tons for the same period.
Iran is poised to continue increase the palm oil imports from Malaysia to reach one million metric tons and above annually in a bid to address the growing demand over the next few years.
This, however, requires better coordination and cooperation from the relevant ministries, government-linked companies and agencies to further strengthen the bilateral ties towards a mutual goal.
To further fuel the industry and re-escalate bilateral trade activities, Iran will continue to increase palm oil imports as the country paves the way into economic recovery from the effects of the pandemic.
With that, Iran is also ready to become Malaysia’s hub for distribution of palm oil and palm oil-related products into the lucrative markets in West Asia and Central Asian countries bordering its country.
This would set the ground for a more strategic bilateral trade ties between both two nations to make each other a gateway to other countries.
Thanks to its strategic geographical location, Iran has land and sea borders to 15 regional countries in the Middle-east as well as West and Central Asia.
Meanwhile, Malaysia would be a vital gateway to other ASEAN countries, which are home to over 650 million people.
Looking back at Iran-Malaysia trade history over the past five years, both countries witness significant growth for three consecutive years from 2016 to 2018 following Iran’s Nuclear Deal in 2015 and bilateral trade value between two sides rose from RM2.82 billion in 2016 to a whopping RM4.52 billion in 2017.
Although the bilateral trade activities between Iran and Malaysia dipped last year due to the negative consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, Iran is set to boost its ties with Malaysia as both countries head into recovery this year.
