TEHRAN (Iran News) – Chairman of the Iran-Japan Joint Trade Committee says without any doubt reforming relations with Japan will help the trade ties between the two countries to broaden but at the current condition, there is no chance for direct import of cars from Japan.

Speaking to ILNA, Bahram Shakouri pointed to the role of ambassador in developing trade ties and said that Iran, in an important country like Japan, has no trade ambassador while these envoys can play important roles in broadening trade relations although Iran with having embassies and ambassadors in many countries has failed to take important actions for advancing broadening of trade its.

He added that Japan is one of the economic poles of the world and Iranian government should attach more importance to relation with Japan because Japan can replace European countries and the U.S. in the field of knowledge and technology transfer.

Shakouri went on to say that Toyota Company produces over 10m cars per year that 75% of its products are offered in the international markets. He added that the U.S. and Europe are themselves car manufacturers but since the price and quality of Asian cars especially the Japanese are good and suitable, the demands for purchase of Japanese cars exist in the European and the U.S. markets.

He stated that Japanese auto-makers can invest in Iran or export cars to Iran, adding that materialization of this will be possible when Iran improves the course of interactions with the world, and without any doubt, reforming ties will lead to broadening trade ties with Japan and at the current condition, Iran cannot import cars from Japan directly.

Shakouri then pointed to the joint investment of the Japanese with Americans and said that keeping the trade relations with the U.S. is important for the Japanese because the U.S. is the biggest trade partner of the Japanese and most of Japanese products are sold in the U.S. market and therefor trade with the U.S. is more important than with Iran for the Japanese.

He admitted due to the sanctions on Iran, the Japanese are currently not interested in trade with Iran but it is possible for Iran to import cars via the third party country.

He said that that the industry ministry has set condition for import of cars and there should be representative of the companies for the after sales services and this condition will almost zero the chance of presence of the foreign car manufacturers in Iran in the sanctions era and this condition means that Iran can only import cars from China and Russia.

Shakouri added that the trade volume of Iran and Japan is currently below $30m and noted that Iran’s trade relation with Japan dates back to over 90 years and Japanese are interested in working with Iran but traders first think about their profits and since their profits in trade with the U.S. is more than trade with Iran, it is natural they choose the U.S. and Iran can import required equipment via the third party countries.