TEHRAN – Iran plans to send five new commercial attachés to different target markets by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20), an official with the Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) announced.

According to Mojtaba Mousavian, the TPO’s deputy head for export markets development, the organization has made the necessary preparations to dispatch commercial envoys to Russia, Oman, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and China.

The official noted that the TPO also plans to dispatch commercial attachés to Turkey, India, and Pakistan in the first half of the next Iranian calendar year (March 21-September 22).

“The attaché for Turkey has been selected and we are waiting for the confirmation of his security clearance; for Pakistan and India, we have also considered candidates whose validation process will be completed by August,” Mousavian explained.

The number of Iranian commercial attachés will reach 10 in the first half of the next Iranian calendar year, he stressed.

He further noted that some markets like the neighboring countries plus China and India are the top priorities for dispatching commercial attachés.

Syria, Kazakhstan, and Lebanon are also the next countries to which TPO plans to send commercial attachés, the official said.

According to Mousavian, TPO has sent 69 commercial attachés to various countries over the past 25 years, and at best, even in one year, 25 commercial attachés were present at their mission.

The number, however, has now decreased, he said adding: “Considering the needs of the country's business community and the private sector and in order to develop and facilitate non-oil trade, the organization has been implementing new programs for increasing the number of commercial attachés, at least in the country’s top trade partners.”

Earlier in January, TPO Head Hamid Zadboum said that the organization plans to send 20 commercial attachés to new target markets in the upcoming Iranian calendar year 1400.

“We have considered the budget required for [dispatching] 20 commercial attachés to new target markets in our budget for [the year] 1400,” Zadboum said in an interview with local media.

Underlining the significant role of commercial attachés in accelerating trade with other countries, Zadboum said: “Commercial attachés are the business arms of our ambassadors in destination markets and the task of commercial attachés is to strengthen trade diplomacy.”

The official stressed the need for diversifying the country’s export basket in order to be able to diversify export destinations, noting: “naturally, the diversity of the export basket depends to a large extent on the production of diverse export products, so we must move in a direction that our products are tailored to the needs of target markets.”

Two years ago about 54 percent of our exports were made to 15 neighboring countries, and now the figure has increased to over 62 percent in the first eight months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 19-November 20, 2020), Zadboum said.

Following the government’s policies for increasing the country’s trade with the neighbors over the past few years, the TPO, as the foreign trade representative of the Industry, Mining, and Trade Ministry, has been trying to send new commercial attachés to target markets every year.

In early December 2020, the Head of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA) Gholam-Hossein Shafeie had called on the government to choose the country’s commercial attachés from among the private sector representatives.

EF/MA