Assessment Of Competitiveness on The World Market For Medicinal Plants And Prioritize Target Countries For Export

Economists and policy makers always refer to an increase in non-oil export as a way to reduce dependence on non-renewable underground reservs.in order to achieve this goal, due to the axial role of agriculture in economy; the main attention is drawing to this part. Medicinal plants are one of the most important export items in country agriculture sector due to their high unit value. Nowadays, because of some main social and economic differences among various groups of consumers and the extent of global markets, development of non-oil exports in general and increase in agriculture exports specifically requires the use of a systematic and modern method in order to identify and politicize the target export markets. This study conducted with the goal of evaluation of Iran competitiveness in global markets of medicinal plants and priories target export countries of this group of plants. For this purpose, first competitiveness of Iran in global markets of medicinal plants evaluated with the use of the index of revealed comparative advantage and symmetric revealed comparative advantage, then, screening techniques and multi-criteria decision used in order to priories target countries for export of medicinal plants. Results show that Iran has comparative advantage in export of medicinal plants during years 2000-2011. Also, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, United States of America, United Kingdom, Qatar, Botswana, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Canada have the highest priory for export of medicinal plants.