Baku, Azerbaijan, March 15
By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is going to visit Iran in the second half of Farvardin (Iranian calendar month whose second half falls on April 4 to 20), said Iranian ICT minister Mahmoud Vaezi.
Vaezi made the remark on the sidelines of an Iran-Turkey joint economic committee session, Fars news agency reported March 14.
The ICT minister, who attends the session as President Hassan Rouhani's special envoy, noted that the joint committee was launched in order to investigate the documents that are going to be signed during Erdogan's visit.
This is the first session of the joint committee, in which a preferential agreement was passed, he said.
Preferential trade agreement is a pact that reduces tariffs for certain products to the countries who sign it. While the tariffs are not necessarily eliminated, they are lower than countries not party to the agreement. It is a form of economic integration.
In January 2014, Iran and Turkey signed the agreement with the goal of boosting bilateral trade.
125 items of Iranian goods and 140 items of Turkish goods will be traded according to the preferential agreement.
Vaezi further said that the second session of the joint committee will be held by the two presidents, and will also focus on energy, finance, tourism, and banking.
The trade turnover between Iran and Turkey in the first half of 2014 stood at $6.5 billion, according to data released by Turkish Statistical Institute.
The trade turnover between Turkey and Iran stood at $22 billion in 2012 before dipping to $14.5 billion in the following year due to the economic sanctions imposed on Tehran by the West.