BAGHDAD, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture launched a campaign to prevent the smuggling of agricultural products, aiming at protecting the Iraqi agricultural sector, an official newspaper said on Thursday.

The campaign, which was backed by Iraqi security forces, resulted in the seizing of dozens of smuggler trucks who were smuggling agricultural products into and out of the country, Minister of Agriculture Mohammad al-Khafaji told al-Sabah Newspaper.

Al-Khafaji pointed out that the ministry teams and security forces deployed in all checkpoints between the country's provinces and all wholesale vegetable markets to protect the local agricultural products to achieve self-sufficiency in the country's markets, the newspaper said.

Moreover, al-Khafaji said that one of the procedures taken by the Iraqi authorities to protect local agricultural products is to impose taxes on imported agricultural products to stabilize vegetable prices in the country's markets, according to al-Sabah.

For his part, spokesman of the ministry Hameed al-Nayf told the newspaper that the campaign began on Saturday, and the security forces took control of many border crossings with neighboring countries, in addition to checkpoints between Iraq's semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan and its neighboring provinces.

Iraq seeks to exploit its agricultural potential by protecting the agricultural sector to boost the country's economy while reducing dependence on the export of crude oil, as the Iraqi economy relies heavily on crude oil exports, which represent more than 90 percent of the country's revenues. Enditem

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