KABUL (Ariana News): The value of Iran’s non-oil exports to Afghanistan increased by four percent during the first seven months of the current Solar year, as compared to the same period of time in the past year.
According to Ruhollah Latifi, the spokesman of the International Relations and Trade Development Committee of Iran’s House of Industry, Mining and Trade, Iran exported non-oil commodities worth $975 million to Afghanistan in the seven-month period of this year.
Latifi said Iran has a 35 percent share in Afghanistan’s import market, which is a considerable figure in bilateral trade ties.
Mohammad-Mehdi Javanmard-Ghassab, the economic adviser of the Iranian president’s special envoy on Afghanistan affairs, stated that the country is seeking to export technology, technical know-how as well as technical and engineering services to Afghanistan.
Increasing the production of Iranian products in Afghanistan is also on the agenda, he emphasized.
According to Mohammad Ghanadzadeh, the deputy head of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO), the trade between Iran and Afghanistan has increased by 20 percent in the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 21).
Ghanadzadeh said Iran is ready to cooperate with Afghanistan in the country’s development and reconstruction projects.
The Iranian and Afghan governments are taking some prominent measures to boost trade between the two countries.
In early March, Iran’s trade center and permanent exhibition of Iranian products was inaugurated in Kabul with the aim of developing trade relations between the two countries.
Then in late July, a joint exhibition of products made in Iran and Afghanistan was held in Herat.
More recently the two countries signed five memorandums of understanding (MOUs) on cooperation in different economic sectors.
The MOUs were signed in a ceremony on November 9 in the presence of Iranian Agriculture Minister Mohammad-Ali Nikbakht, President Raisi’s special envoy for Afghanistan Hassan Kazemi Qomi, and Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
The MOUs include the cooperation document of the Iran-Afghanistan Joint Economic Committee meeting, the document of the two sides’ Joint International Road Transport Cooperation Committee meeting, the MOU between Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization (CAO) and the Afghan side, the MOU between Iran’s Esfahan Steel Company and the Afghan side, and the MOU between Iran’s Secretariat of Free Trade and Special Economic Zones and the Afghan sides.
Iran’s non-oil exports to Afghanistan up 4 per cent
