Making the remarks on Saturday during a meeting on describing investment potentials and opportunities in Chabahar port and transportation of transit goods, Gaddam Dharmendra highlighted the importance of Chabahar port for the Indian government adding that more negotiations are required to be made about the commitments of India in this port.

He also referred to the efforts made by the Indian and Afgan governments to exclude Chabahar port from the US sanctions however there are some banking challenges.

Addressing the mutual trade with Iran the ambassador said that “during the past recent year, Iran-India trade has grown 30 percent reaching $17 billion per year.”

“A banking channel has been specified in India to trade with Iran for easing commodity exchange,” he added.

On June 6, Head of Chabahar’s Shahid Kalantari Port Mojtaba Mohammadzadeh revealed the readiness of Chabahar Port for exporting refrigerated products and transit of dried nuts of Afghanistan to India.

To pave suitable ways for exporting agricultural and fishery products and helping promotion of domestic products, refrigerated containers have been constructed in Shahid Kalantari Port in Chabahar in order to export refrigerated products to abroad, he maintained.

Iran, India and Afghanistan signed a trilateral agreement on the development of Chabahar Port in Tehran in May 2016 to establish a strategic transit and transport route connecting the three countries. The agreement aims at developing the southern Iran port into a regional trade hub. India began commercial activity at Chabahar on January 8th.

On March 2, India Global Ports Limited (IGPL) announced that it is committed to investing up to $500m to develop Chabahar Port in southern Iran as part of series of projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Alireza Jahan, the representative of the Iranian partner of IGPL, said the investments will be made over the next 10 years to equip the port of Chabahar with special loading and unloading harbor facilities.

IGPL has been tasked with administering and running the terminal of the first phase of ‘Beheshti harbor’ at Chabahar Port.