TEHRAN- Farzad Piltan, the director-general of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO)’s Office of Arabian and African Countries said that Iran has the potential for exporting $150 million of garments to Iraq per year.

As reported by the TPO news portal on Wednesday, the official made the remarks on the sidelines of the third meeting of TPO’s Commodity-Country Desk on trade with Iraq, which was mainly focused on investigating the ways for increasing garments export to the Arab country.

“Iraq imports $700 million of garments per year, while the share of Iran’s garment exports to its neighbor is just $35 million, which can be increased at least to $150 million”, Piltan noted.

Despite the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic, Iraq has been getting closer to Iran both politically and economically. 

There is also the same approach adopted by Iran, as many Iranian companies are now eager to conduct trade with Iraq, especially with the Kurdistan region where there is a great demand for Iranian products.

Iraq is currently Iran’s biggest trade partner and the two countries have been taking significant steps to improve their mutual trade over the past few years.

Heading a high-ranking delegation, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi arrived in the Iranian capital Tehran last week.

The trip followed the Iranian foreign minister’s visit to Baghdad and Erbil last Sunday.

Iran and Iraq are finalizing a foreign currency agreement, based on which several billions of dollars will be injected into Iran's market in the near future, an official with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) said.

Hamid Ghanbari, who accompanied Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in the mentioned visit to Iraq on Sunday, said the two sides held positive talks and agreed on expanding foreign currency and banking ties. 

“During this visit, useful and constructive talks were held with the Iraqi side, the results of which will be finalized during the visit of the Iraqi Prime Minister and the accompanying delegation to Tehran,” Ghanbari said.

Also on July 21, head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA) and the Iraqi Finance Minister held talks, calling for strengthening customs and border cooperation between the two countries.

In the meeting, which was on the sidelines of a meeting between Iraq’s Prime Minister Mostafa al-Kadhimi and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Mehdi Mirashrafi and Ali Allawi emphasized the reopening of Iran-Iraq borders and boosting customs cooperation.

During the meeting, the Iraqi minister underlined his government’s interest in joint cooperation and using Iran's customs experiences, especially in the field of electronic procedures and automation.

Regarding his country's borders with Iran, he announced the Iraqi government’s decision on reopening southern borders as soon as possible.

Regarding the technical cooperation between the two countries, Allawi called for sending Iraqi customs experts and staff to Iran to use the technical experiences of the Iranian customs.

The establishment of a joint trade gateway was also emphasized between the Iraqi minister of finance and the IRICA head.

MA/MA