Baku, Azerbaijan, May 18
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran and Azerbaijan need to facilitate bank cooperation in order to boost economic ties.
Iranian telecommunications minister Mahmoud Vaezi said preliminary negotiations have been carried out in this regard, Iran's Tasnim news agency reported on May 18.
He made the remarks in a meeting in Tehran with Azerbaijani Ambassador to Iran Javanshir Akhundov.
Vaezi, who is also the chairman of the Iran-Azerbaijan joint economic committee meeting, expressed hope that the annual bilateral trade could be increased up to $500 million.
For his part, Akhundov said that supporting the private sectors could be way to boost economic relations between the two countries.
Iran Customs Administration's latest report suggests that the trade turnover between Tehran and Baku surpassed $514million dollars in the previous Iranian calendar year, which ended on March 20.
Iran's exports to Azerbaijan accounted for $482 million of the mentioned figure.
Tehran also imported $32 million worth of goods from Baku in the mentioned period.
The mentioned figures show that Iran's trade balance with Azerbaijan stood at $450 million previous year.
Iran exported 2,130 cars worth $15,080,000 to Azerbaijan last year, which is 21.5 per cent more than in the preceding year.
Iran's total non-oil exports to foreign countries (excluding gas condensates) stood at $31.332 billion in the previous year, while the country's total imports amounted to $50.818 billion.
The figures mark annual trade balance of negative 19.486 billion dollars for Iran.