TEHRAN,Iran,Aug.28
Trend:
Iran's export to EEC countries has increased 63 percent from October 27, 2019, to June 20, 2020, said the head of Trade and Promotion Organization in Iran.
"Iran has exported $383 million worth of goods to the Eurasian Economic Commission(EEC) member states. During this timeline the country's imports which were primarily essential goods from EEC has reduced 15 percent to $1.2 billion," said Hamid Zadboom, Trend reports citing Mehr News Agency.
"Agricultural goods were Iran's major export to ECC in the past eight months. The country has exported $83 million worth of apples to EEC countries. Furthermore, other exports included pistachio, kiwi, raisin, pepper, date, lettuce, cauliflower, and carpet," he said.
"More than 20 border checkpoints were closed from March 5 to May 20 due to coronavirus pandemic that reduced exports which lead to Iran exporting goods to EEC via sea," he added.
"Iran's current trade volume with EEC is $2.5 billion and we predict if the free trade is implemented the trade volume would increase four times to $10 billion in the next five years," he said.
"Under current sanctions, our focus is to increase trade with neighboring countries. The target for the current Iranian year (started March 20, 2020) is to increase trade by 71 percent," he said.
"There is tariff discount in the free trade agreement between Iran and EEC for some items where Iran has provided tariff discount for 20 percent of items for EEC side and 80 percent of items have fixed tariffs," he said.
"The free trade agreement shows that continuing the work would be very positive for free trade but there are problems concerning exports to EEC including logistic infrastructures, roads, borders entries, transportation and shipment from Iran to Russia and Kazakhstan requires development," he said.
"The other issue is finance that means Iranian and EEC exporters should use special credit lines for trade development," he said.