Head of Iran National Carpet Center Hamid Karegar said on Wednesday that Europeans are the enthusiastic buyers of Persian carpets.

‘The Europeans are in line to purchase but Americans are still waiting in the line for five years due to sanctions,’ Karegar told IRNA.
He said that Persian hand-woven carpets in the past seven months of the current Iranian year (started on March 21) fetched more than 142 million dollars.
Karegar said based on statistics released by Iran Customs Administration, 2,620 tons of hand-woven carpets were exported to 80 countries in the past seven months.
Export of the Persian carpets amounted to $166 million, showing 14 percent growth compared to the figure in the preceding period.
The exported hand-woven carpets weighed more than 3,100 tons, showing 16 percent growth.
Moreover, the eight-month statistics showed more than 3,900 tons of hand-woven carpets, worth more than $202 million, were exported to more than 80 countries, showing increases of 24 and 12 percent in weight and value respectively compared to the figures in the same period in the year 1392 (2013-14).
Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France in Europe, Lebanon, Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait in the Middle East and China and Japan in east of Asia are major buyers of Iranian hand-woven carpets in the seven-month period.
Head of Iran National Carpet Center expressed hope that lifting the sanctions would prepare the ground for export of Iranian hand-woven carpet to other parts of the world and the US market, which was closed to Iranian exports for five years, will be re-opened.
Karegar said a number of countries were not directly affected by the sanctions but followed the same rule, which led to fall of the export of hand-woven carpets.
Iran National Carpet Center put the value of exports of Iranian hand-woven carpets at more than 330 million dollars the year before.