TEHRAN, Iran, Apr.28
Trend:
The Iran-Turkey trade volume has suffered a number of declines in 2020, head of Iran-Turkey Joint Chamber of Commerce Mehrdad Saadat Dehghan told Trend.
"Many factors affected the trade between the two countries and the most important reasons were COVID-19, and sanctions. All this reduced Iran's export while the country has mostly imported goods," Dehghan said.
"In previous years Iran created limitations for Turkish businessmen that formed an improper atmosphere. The two sides agreed on implementing preferential tariff on 128 items, but the government has banned import of 60 commodity items from Turkey due to some criticism and since then it was not possible for Turkish side to register orders, and complaints followed," he said.
"The government announced various reasons for import ban and it's possible that one of them was the fear of local producers to lose the domestic market," Dehghan said.
"Producers claimed that the government has offered Iran's market to Turks, but the producers could've worked on competition, instead of pressuring the government to ban importing certain goods from Turkey," he said.
"On the other hand there were lack of commitments by the Turkish side and its approach towards Iranian businessmen was not professional," said the official. "Turkey did not have good behavior towards Iranian businessmen in terms of commodity transit."
"If we want to increase export of non-oil commodities to Turkey and our main target is to increase the export to neighboring countries, then the private sector capacity and its transactions should be utilized," he said.