Azerbaijan, Baku, May 07/ Trend F.Milad/
Iraq owes some $400 million to Iran for importing electricity, said the head of the Iranian electricity exporters syndicate.
Hamidreza Salehi told ILNA News Agency that Iran can take advantage of sanctions and other problems for transferring money as an opportunity to boost its technical and engineering services to the international market. However he did not explain how Iran can take advantage of these opportunities.
It has been reported that Iraq has failed to pay for importing electricity from Iran as a result of financial sanctions against Iran and the fact that the two countries use the dollar and euro in their transactions.
Deputy energy minister, Mohammad Behzad, has said that Iran is expected to export about 10 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in the current Iranian year (started March 20).
He added Iran has signed several contracts with its neighbouring countries in this regard which will help boost its electricity exports.
Behzad also said that Iran's electricity exports have soared by 40 per cent since the beginning of the current Iranian year, compared to the same period last year.
"Iraq's Electricity Ministry officials have asked for an increase in power imports from Iran and we have announced that we are willing to provide the country with the available maximum, daily capacity of 1200 MW," energy minister Majid Namjou said on March 8.
"We are also ready to build new power plants in order to increase the capacity of power exports to Iraq," Namjou added.
Iran is currently exchanging electricity with Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Nakhichevan, Turkey and Turkmenistan.