TEHRAN (Iran News) – Iran-India Trade Slumped Due to COVID-19. Vice-President of India-Iran Chamber of Commerce says due to the U.S. unilateral maximum sanctions against Iran in the past year, India stopped buying Iran oil and Iran’s reserve cash in the Indian banks for purchasing goods has finished.
Reacting to the recent statistics released on India’s exports to Iran and its 58 percent decline in the past quarter of the year, Parham Rezaee said that two factors should be blamed for this decline, adding that one factor is the growth of the Indian mutation of COVID-19 and its impact on Indian economy.
He added that the other effective factor is the financial transactions between Iran and India which faced hurdles due to sanctions. He added that since Iran cannot sell oil to India, it has no money in the Indian banks for the purchase of the goods and for this reason the trade between both states has slumped.
Rezaee said Iran had no frozen money in India and it received Indian national currency rupee in exchange of selling oil and the money was deposited in Indian banks for the purchasing goods but currently Iran has no more money in the Indian banks.
He reiterated that the decline in India’s exports to Iran covers all goods and it is not limited to a certain commodity, and goods like raw materials, machineries and textile products were used to be imported that all of them face slump.
In response to a question on the banking transactions between the two states, Rezaee said two banks of UCO and IDBI in India work with Iran and Iran cannot meet its demands through these two banks because it has nor financial reserves in these two banks.
He said if the Vienna talks succeed, it can have its effect on Iran and India trade in the long term but it may have no impact for the time being.
