BAKU, Azerbaijan, January 2. The trade turnover between the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and Iran may exceed $12 billion in the near future, the head of the department of special issues of trade regulation of the Department of Trade Policy of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), Kira Danilcheva, told Trend.
She noted that since 2019, trade between the EAEU member states and Iran has been carried out under the preferential regime established by the Temporary Agreement leading to the formation of a free trade zone between the EAEU and Iran, dated May 17, 2018.
"This agreement has a limited commodity coverage, which covers no more than 5 percent of the commodity nomenclature. However, despite this, the trade turnover between the EAEU and Iran has more than doubled during the period of the agreement," Danilcheva said.
Danilcheva emphasized that since a temporary agreement can only operate for a limited period of time and the development of trade and economic relations has shown a significant result during its application, the parties have worked to conclude a full-fledged free trade agreement, which was signed in December 2023.
According to the EEC representative, the full-format agreement not only greatly increases the range of liberalization (both sides agree to preferential access for almost 90% of the commodity nomenclature), but it also improves the tariff concessions that were set in the interim agreement, which didn't expect Iran's tariff protection to drop below 4%.
"There is every reason to believe that under the conditions of a full-fledged free trade regime in the near future, the trade turnover between the EAEU member states and Iran may exceed $12 billion," she said.
To note, following the results of the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council on December 26, 2024, in St. Petersburg, Iran was granted the status of an observer state at the EAEU.
Chairman of the EEC Collegium Bakytzhan Sagintayev at a meeting with Iran's Minister of Industry, Mines, and Trade Seyed Mohammad Atabak stated that the EEC expects a full-fledged agreement with Iran to enter into force in the near future.
Following the five years of the Temporary Trade Agreement, the trade turnover between the EAEU and Iran has more than doubled from $2.4 billion in 2019 to $5.2 billion in 2023. In the first ten months of this year, the volume of mutual trade grew by 12.8 percent, with exports to Iran increasing by 16 percent and imports by 8 percent.