tl;dr:

Sri Lanka is set to start bartering tea to Iran next month in lieu of $250 million owed for oil, a Sri Lankan official told Reuters on Friday, as the crisis-hit country tries to lift sales to a key market and protect its forex reserves. The barter was agreed in 2021 for oil imported in 2012, but the exchange was delayed after Sri Lanka’s unprecedented dollar shortage last year plunged the economy into its worst financial crisis in more than seven decades, Reuters reports. Iran has been one of Sri Lanka’s main tea buyers, but exports have fallen steadily from $128 million in 2018 to $70 million last year as US sanctions on Iran hit trade. A significant share of Sri Lanka’s tea is now shipped to Iran via the United Arab Emirates, official data shows, with the UAE more than doubling its tea imports from Sri Lanka to $118 million last year from $48 million five years ago. Under the barter programme, state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corp that bought the oil will give rupees to the Tea Board to ship tea via Sri Lankan exporters.

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