Tehran, Iran, Oct.28
Trend:
Iran and the United Arab Emirates have an exchange level of nearly $20 billion, which can hardly be replaced, Masoud Daneshmand, head of the Iran-UAE Chamber of commerce told Trend.
“The US sanctions cannot create a gap in the economic relationship between Iran and the Emirates,” he said. "These sanctions are not a new phenomenon, there were similar sanctions against our country during Obama administration, but nothing changed our good business relationship with the UAE.”
"If we look at the Iran customs statistics, the volume of our exchanges is approximately $ 14 billion, while this amount is $ 20 billion in UAE customs, because some goods are not registered in Iran's customs, but it is registered in the UAE. Therefore, Iran and the UAE cannot easily replace this $20 billion,” said Daneshmand.
“According to 2017 statistics, there were nearly 800,000 Iranians in the UAE who played a major role in UAE`s market,” he said.
Iranian businessmen have recently faced problems in UAE and China, which have had a direct impact on the declining value of Iran's currency (rial). The UAE is a country which directly deals with Iran regarding currency transactions and Iranian businessmen in the Arab country have recently faced obstacles due to the newly introduced regulations on the Value Added Tax.
In April, the former governor of the Central Bank of Iran Valiollah Seif has said that lack of trust, social media and Telegram messaging app as well as the UAE and Saudi Arabia are the reasons behind the weakening national currency, rial.
“People who are already involved in business in UAE know some of the challenges and conflicts which can come into play and are related to the rules and regulations of this country, otherwise many Iranians live in the UAE without any problems. Of course, a few people are exaggerating the issues,” said Daneshmand.
Referring to the trade potential between two countries he says that Iran cannot easily comment on types of import items because the UAE is not producer as Germany, but it`s re-export base.
“Therefore, the merchants are producing what we need, in the UAE and then export to Iran. The same is true for our export to UAE, for example, Iran exports petrochemicals to the United Arab Emirates and then transports them to Africa and Latin America,” he said.
Daneshmand then went on to say that during the latest exchanges between Iran and UAE, the export items were mostly including steel, minerals, copper and etc. and import items are mostly cars and product line items.
Pointing to Iran's expansion of gas export to the UAE he says that currently, Iran’s gas exports to the UAE decreased. If the problems with the contract are resolved, the exports will increase.