Baku, Azerbaijan, May 8
By Khalid Kazimov – Trend:
Spanish banks have expressed interest in facilitating Iran’s petrochemical deals with the EU, a Spanish envoy said.
Spain’s Ambassador to Tehran Eduardo Lopez Busquets has said his country’s banks in near future will be capable of financing projects, IRNA news agency reported.
Speaking at a meeting with Marzieh Shahdaei, an Iranian deputy oil minister, the Spanish envoy said that his country is interested in creating a framework for accelerating the expansion of ties between firms and companies from the two countries.
He further called for removing the existing obstacles and said Spain is interested in concluding agreements with Iran.
Marzieh Shahdaei welcomed the idea for investment in Iran’s petrochemical sector.
Iranian officials earlier described banking issues as a main obstacle against exporting the country’s petrochemical products to the EU.
According to the Iranian officials, the country is capable of exporting at least 2 million tons of petrochemicals to the EU per year.
Although nuclear sanctions on Iran have been removed following the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) last January, most of European banks still appear reluctant to do business with Iran over concerns on running afoul of US regulations.
Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, earlier announced that Iran-EU trade witnessed a considerable surge over the last year as the figure rose by 78 percent to post 13.7 billion euros in 2016.