TEHRAN, Iran, Dec.4
Trend:
The UK could provide an account for transferring Iran's export revenues that could improve trade, said the chairman of Iran – British Chamber of Commerce.
"The major problem of Iran's trade with the UK is financial transactions. Britain has blocked Iranian accounts so Iranian businessmen have no accounts to receive the money from exporting goods," Houshang Amini told Trend in an interview.
"The UK can introduce an account to the Iranian government to transfer the money from export revenue to the account," he said indicating the INSTEX mechanism was not useful.
"Iranian businessmen in the UK do not have banking facilities and use other ways that are not transparent. The British government could assign banking advances to them and allow Iranians to have bank accounts. Most Iranians that establish a company in the UK for trade should have a bank account to register the company in England," he said.
He went on to say that Iranian businessmen are forced to introduce a British individual as an intermediary for their work but if Iranians were allowed to have a bank account of their own, it would not be necessary to do so. The other problem is issuing visas for British businessmen from Iran. Iran – British Chamber of Commerce is trying to create advances for British businessmen to obtain visas from the Iranian consulate easily.
"The UK easily issues visas for Iranian businessmen, the Chamber of Commerce would recommend its members and merchants to the British consulate and they easily issue visas. The trade balance of Iran and the UK was never been positive in Iran's favor not even before the revolution the balance was negative," Amini noted.
"Iran's export to the UK before the revolution was $500 million and its import was $2 billion. In recent years the average of Iran's export was $30 million and import from the UK was $700 million. Part of Iran's import is indirect from Dubai or Turkey that are not considered in official statistics and balance was always negative," he added.
Amini also pointed out that although part of Iran's export like saffron was smuggled to England by passengers that are not considered in statistics either. The major imports from the UK are pharmaceutical and laboratory devices and Iran's major export are dried nuts and industrial items like a gas faucet