Tehran, Iran, Oct.5
Trend:
The value of Iran's exports to Iraq has increased by $500 million in the current Iranian year (started March 21,2019), head of Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce Hamid Hosseini told Trend.
Hosseini added that gasoline is the major exporting item to Iraq.
"The statistics of the first five months of current Iranian year (started March 21,2019) indicate that Iran has exported $3.9 billion worth of goods to Iraq. The goods had a 13 percent increase of value and 60 percent rise of weight," he said.
"The payments are processed by the banking system, however the exports in private sector are handled by a foreign exchange agency," said Hosseini. "Foreign exchange agencies then return the revenues in foreign currency back to Iran's economic cycle."
"Iraq's private sector is not interested to have banking cooperation. Iran on the other hand, has three banks in Iraq, but our banking system in Iraq was not successful and Iraqi investors have no interest in establishing banking relations," said the official. "On the other hand, sanctions have forced the Iraqi side to back off from working with Iranian banks."
Referring to the problems that Iran's exporters are facing in Iraq, he mentioned that the laws and tariffs on imports are constantly being changed and this causes problems.
"The trade model with Iraq should be based on trust, but there are problems, specially for companies that are dependent on organizations or big companies and are not able to work with this system," he added.
Also, we have information that presence of Jordan in Iraqi market has increased, Some 750 trucks are daily transporting goods from Jordan to Iraq. Jordan has become an alternative for our goods in Iraq," he added.