Tehran, Iran, Dec.19
Trend:
Iran intends to promote customs ties with its neighbors and aims to increase the trade volume with Azerbaijan through railways.
"Regarding the development of Iran's transactions, the country seeks to expand ties with regional countries," the director general of Iran's International Customs Cooperation Office Hussein Kakkhi told Trend.
"In addition to regular meetings with our neighboring countries, Iran aims to ease the ceremonial process and hasten the commodity transaction and passenger transfer," he said.
Referring to Iran's customs transactions with Azerbaijan, Kakkhi noted that fortunately there is a good relation between the customs of two countries and Iran had signed many documents with Azerbaijan.
“Some of the signed documents include a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for customs administration cooperation and electronic data exchange, alongside holding bilateral meetings,” he said.
"The customs officials of Iran and Azerbaijan held a joint meeting in Nakhchivan and Julfa on June 14, where various issues were discussed including exchange of electronic official letters and launching of the ESE software, issue of insurance certificate and negotiations over common interaction between borders and signing the draft to launch the eTIR system with Azerbaijan, that hopefully would finalize by the end of year (March 20)," he said.
"Iran had previously launch the eTIR plan with Turkey, and now it intends to finalize the eTIR with Azerbaijan," Kakkhi said.
The digital eTIR system is the global cross-border transit system that aims to ensure the secure exchange of data between national Customs systems related to the international transit of goods, vehicles or containers.
The official indicated the government plans to improve the customs trade through railway.
"The railway between Iran and Azerbaijan has been inaugurated for a long time and part of it is trading cargoes. Part of imports exports is traded at the Astara border and Iran seeks to increase the trade volume through railways,” he said.
"Due to low cost of cargo transfer through railway for both countries, the policy is to build railway infrastructures and warehouses that would increase the customs trade volume,” Kakkhi explained.