TEHRAN (Iran News) – Tehran, Dushanbe Set Roadmap for Economic Cooperation. The Head of American and European Office of the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran (TPOI) Mohammadreza Karimzadeh said that Iran and Tajikistan held a meeting to prepare the roadmap for their economic cooperation in order to increase the bilateral trade in line with the agreements of their presidents which was made during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Tajikistan.
Karimzadeh said that in the meeting, the framework of the documents on the roadmap for cooperation between Iran and Tajikistan in the fields of investment, transportation, industrial and mining, trade, banking and customs affairs were discussed.
He added some other issues like the importance of employing the mechanism of barter trade with Tajikistan, banking cooperation and the latest developments in the field of investment were discussed.
Karimzadeh also said that the two sides also signed the deal for exchange of technical and economic cooperation as well as electronic information for the customs affairs and both sides emphasized implementation of these documents in the roadmap.
He went on to say that in the meeting both sides called for more cooperation and involvements from the private sector companies in those fields. They also discussed the problems of Iranian companies especially in the field of the technical and engineering services especially in the mining industries and mother technologies.
Karimzadeh noted that Iran’s exports to Tajikistan in the first half of the year has increased by 140% and has reached $17m.
During the SCO Summit in September, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi expressed hope that the 500-million-dollar trading target between Iran and Tajikistan would unlock a new era of bilateral relations.
Speaking in the meeting of the high-level delegations of Iran and Tajikistan in Dushanbe, Raisi hailed the favorable, successful holding of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit on Friday and the hospitality of the Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and government.
He welcomed the Tajik President’s proposal to elevate trading and transfer of Iran’s private sector engineering and technical achievements to Tajikistan, proposing formation of a working group to review previous agreements between Iran and Tajikistan, and to find out why some of them have not been implemented or were slow in action.
Elsewhere in the meeting, President Rahmon described Raisi’s trip to Tajikistan a historical visit and expressed regret that trading between Iran and Tajikistan has decreased to 57 million dollars a year, despite 160 cooperation documents signed in the past.
He expressed hope, however, that the two countries can achieve the 500-million-dolar target with increasing contacts and meetings of officials.
