Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8
By Dalga Khatinoglu – Trend:
Iran’s engineering service exports have surpassed the $2 billion mark since the implementation of nuclear deal in January 2016, Mohammad Reza Ansari, the head of International Consultants and Contractors Association of Iran (ICCA) told IRNA Mar.8.
He said that the major problem in expanding engineering service exports is issuing letter of guarantee by Iranian banks.
“Foreigners don’t accept the letter of guarantees, issued by Iranian banks, including the Export Development Bank of Iran,” he said.
Ansari said that this problem can be resolved by government-to-government agreements.
“For instance, Iranian government is negotiating with Algeria to resolve the letter of guarantee issue and in case the outcome of talks is successful and governments ensure the deals, Iranian companies would be able to export $6-7 billion worth of engineering services to Algerian projects," he said.
According to him, the implementation of the same mechanism in deals with Central Asian, African and South American states can increase Iran’s engineering service export to $12 billion annually.
He said that, Iran’s targeted markets can absorb at least $25 billion of Iranian engineering service exports, in case all of banking and financial restrictions are eliminated.
According to the statistics of Iran Trade Promotion Organization (TPO), Iran’s engineering service exports was $4.118 billion during in pre-sanctions era in 2011, but the figure plunged to $2.322 billion in 2012, when western sanctions on Iran were imposed. TPO has not included engineering service exports value to its reports since 2013.
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