Basmati rice exports likely to be affected due to Iran-Israel war

20-Jun-2025 08:19 PM

New Delhi. For the last seven-eight days, there has been a fierce war between Iran and Israel and this is not only causing huge destruction in both the countries but it is also having a deep adverse effect on many other countries of the world. India is also included in this.

Along with tea, spices, sugar and soymeal, Basmati rice is also exported on a large scale from India to Iran, but due to the war, its shipment has come to a halt. Due to this, the price of Basmati rice has fallen by more than 10 percent, while it is expected to fall further in the future.

According to official figures, the export of Basmati rice from India is continuously increasing and Iran has a good share in it.

During the financial year 2021-22, about 39.44 lakh tonnes of Basmati rice was exported from India, which improved to 45.61 lakh tonnes in 2022-23 and increased to 52.42 lakh tonnes in 2023-24. In the financial year 2024-25,

the exports jumped further to an all-time high of over 60.55 lakh tonnes. This was the first time that Indian exporters took the export of Basmati rice above 60 lakh tonnes.

As far as Iran is concerned, it had imported 9.98 lakh tonnes of Basmati rice from India in 2021-22 and 9.99 lakh tonnes in 2022-23, but in 2023-24, the imports there declined to 6.71 lakh tonnes.

Imports again increased to 8.55 lakh tonnes in 2024-25 and thus it remained the third largest importer of Indian Basmati rice.

Earlier, Iran had imported huge quantities of Basmati rice from India in the financial year 2020-21 (7.48 lakh tonnes), 2019-20 (13.19 lakh tonnes) and 2018-19 (14.84 lakh tonnes) and became its largest importer.