TEHRAN (Iran News) –Head of Iran-Afghanistan Joint Chamber of Commerce says the trade between Iran and Afghanistan is currently declining but he reiterates investment of Afghans in Iran is on the rise.
Speaking to ILNA, Hossein Salimi said that the water tension between the two countries is not a serious issue and this problem has existed since the era of Former Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, adding that now Taliban claim that the level of water in Hirmand River has decreased and they are unable to direct water towards Iran.
He added that recent differences between Iran and Afghanistan has not much affected their trade exchanges, adding that the trend of trade between the two countries has been downward since last year because transfer of money between the two countries faced problems and some of the forex shops which were in charge of forex transfer between the two countries have been closed and currently there is no legal forex shop in Iran for working with Afghanistan and this condition has also happened in Afghanistan.
He added that the biggest branch for transfer of money to Iran was Harat which was in control of Afghans but this branch was closed down by the Taliban government but this forex shop has resumed its activities in recent years but he does not know when transfer of money between Iran and Afghanistan will be normalized in this branch.
Salimi reiterated that one of the reasons for the decline in trade exchange of Afghanistan is that the U.S. Administration has stopped helping Afghanistan as Washington has stopped its annual $4baid to Afghanistan and Afghans with those money used to trade with Iran.
He then pointed to the decline in trade volume of both countries and said that two years ago the trade volume was $2.3b but it fell to $1.2b last year and if the current trend continues, the trade volume is unlikely to surpass the past year’s figure and even it may decline while value of Afghan national currency has not reduced too much in comparison to Iran’s.
Salimi then said that the volume of investment by Afghans in Iran is very considerable, adding that Afghans are interested in investing in Iran, for example, out of 40 foreign investment projects at least 10 belongs to Afghans but the value of investment is low and around $500,000 to $20m.
He added that last year Iran attracted $2b of foreign investment that Afghanistan accounted for almost 20% of the figure.
He went on to say that Afghan businessmen because of problem with Taliban government prefer to transfer their capitals to Iran or Turkey but if they are helped, they prefer Iran. He said that five million Afghans are working in Iran and some part of this working population send their money to Afghanistan for their families and they usually change their rial into dollar and send to their country.
