TEHRAN (Iran News) – Chairman of Iran-Switzerland Joint Chamber of Commerce Sharif Nezam-Mafi says the trade exchange between Iran and Switzerland has soared in the last month, adding that the current problem regarding the imports of medicines from Switzerland is the shortage of forex.
Speaking to ILNA, Nezam-Mafi said that although there are some problems for trade with Switzerland because of transportation and banking saga, there are not so that the medicine trade can be halted and in fact one should see how much forex is allocated to imports of medicine. He reiterated the major problem for import of medicine is the shortage of forex.
Touching upon the current condition of trade between Iran and Switzerland, he said the trade volume between the two countries is mostly in the field of grain and medicine which are done through the existing mechanisms especially the current banking avenues but due to the limits of forex, the trade has declined due to the sharp forex restrictions. He further said of course last month comparing to the preceding six months they have seen a considerable leap in trade but this leap is from one to two while the capacity for trade between Iran and Switzerland is around 100.Therefore, the leap that we are seeing is just a very small dot from a capacity which can have.
On the import of medicines from Switzerland, Nezam-Mafi said the medicine trade still goes on through the existing avenues of course not in a level to meet the national demands and the amount of import of medicines from Switzerland in the past six months has not changed so much, he added.
He said that rise in the amount of import of medicines depends on the power of purchase and the forex condition of Iran and if the Central Bank of Iran provides the importers with enough forex, then more medicines will be imported. He admitted that for trade with Switzerland there are some problems in banking and transportation but they are not so that they can affect the import of medicines.
Nezam-Mafi reiterated that Iran’s economic problems has not been tied with which government runs the country but there are macro problems that some of them have been tied with the political issues, adding that the issue of the FATF is one of them.
He expressed hope that the new government would see the economic problems with an economic approach and it may lead to a development. He reiterated that if the issue of the FATF is not resolved, the country will not be able to have banking relation with other countries.
Nezam-Mafi further said that the government change in Iran does not have so effect on trade between Iran and Switzerland and Swiss companies, and governments make their decisions based on the national or companies’ interests and for them it makes no difference who runs the government in Iran.
He went on to say that the world economy does not wait for us to decide what to do as it goes ahead and this is us who should harmonize with it in a way that we benefit from the world economy in our favor.
