Baku, Azerbaijan, May 25
By Fatih Karimov - Trend: The National Iranian Tanker Company eyes reentering the European market once the international sanctions on the company are lifted, said NITC managing director Ali Akbar Safaee.
"We are now present in the international market, but we are seeking to enter the European market," Iran's ISNA news agency quoted Safaee as saying May 25.
Maritime transportation accounts for 93 percent of the country's total trade, he noted.
The sanctions on the shipping and the insurance industries could not cripple the NITC, so that the company holds the world's largest fleet with 15.5 million metric tons of capacity, he said.
The National Iranian Tanker Company will pursue annulling new bans imposed by the European Union.
In February, Safaee said the company will follow up the case in international courts to compensate for the losses it has suffered as a result of the sanctions.
European governments should know that imposing sanctions on NITC will deprive the international maritime industry of capacities of a large and modern transport fleet, Safaee said.
On Feb. 12, European Union governments agreed to put NITC back on a list of sanctioned firms.
The EU's second-highest court ruled last July there were no grounds to blacklist the NITC after it contested the designation, but the EU moved to re-impose sanctions on tighter legal grounds.
NITC - a major transporter of Iran's oil - contested the EU's original blacklisting last year, arguing that the firm is privately owned by Iranian pension funds. It has denied any links with the Iranian government or with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
Edited by CN