Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 5
By Umid Niayesh- Trend:
Tehran and Ashgabat are determined to meet the targeted US$60 billion in bilateral trade volume within a ten-year period, the Islamic republic's oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, said.
He made the remarks at a meeting with Ahmed Gorbanov, Turkmenistan's ambassador to Tehran, the oil ministry's official SHANA news agency reported on Nov. 5.
The mutual trade value has increased from $90 million in 1991 to $4 billion in 2014, which is appreciable, Zanganeh stated.
Gorbanov, for his part, stressed that all regional countries would benefit from the implementation of the Tehran-Ashgabat agreements.
He referred to the launch of the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway project as an outstanding example of cooperation between Tehran and Ashgabat.
Becoming operational last December, the railway is part of the North-South international transport corridor, which joins the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea through Iran and then continues to St. Petersburg and northern Europe via Russia.
Earlier in March, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani made a two-day official visit to Ashgabat at the invitation of his Turkmen counterpart, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.
During the visit, Rouhani announced that Iran and Turkmenistan had decided to increase the total value of their economic exchanges to $60 billion in the coming decade.
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