Iran and Vietnam have set the target of increasing their bilateral trade from the current $350 million a year to $2 billion in five years.
The statement was made by Iran's President Hassan Rouhani in a joint press conference with his visiting Vietnamese counterpart Truong Tan Sang in Tehran on Monday, IRNA reported.
Sang, who is accompanied by a delegation of Vietnamese businesspeople and merchants, said expansion of trade and economic ties tops the agenda of Tehran and Hanoi.
Extending his best wishes to President Rouhani and the Iranian nation on the occasion of the upcoming Iranian New Year (starting March 20), he invited his counterpart to pay a visit to Vietnam.
The Vietnamese president arrived in Tehran late Sunday for a three-day visit and was met at the airport by Iran's Minister of Industries, Mining and Trade Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, Vietnamese Ambassador to Iran Nguyen Hong Thach, representatives of the Vietnamese community in Iran, and the ambassadors of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. He was officially welcomed by President Rouhani on Monday morning.
During his stay, Sang is also scheduled to attend a Vietnam-Iran Business Forum on Tuesday, which is organized by Trade Promotion Organization of Iran.
Since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic ties on August 4, 1973, Vietnam and Iran have engaged in mutual cooperation in the fields of politics, economy, culture, education, and science and technology. However, statistics show that Vietnam-Iran economic links remain limited and are yet to match their potential. Iran’s embassy in Hanoi and Vietnam’s embassy in Tehran were opened in 1991 and 1997, respectively.
The unimpressive bilateral trade of late is widely attributed to the impact of economic sanctions on Iran, leading to a failure to agree on a common payment method and a lack of information about each other's market.
Due to the US embargo on Iran, the Danan Oilfield–a project signed by PetroVietnam Exploration and Production Corporation and the National Iranian Oil Company, halted its operation, Vietnamnet reported.
Over the past five years, Vietnam has shipped seafood, rice, tea, coffee, pepper, cashew-nuts, rattan and bamboo, rubber, plastics, spare parts, electronic accessories and garments to Iran and imported plastic materials, petrochemical products, metal, wheat, textile-leather and footwear.
On the sidelines of the Asia-Africa Summit in Jakarta last April, Sang and Rouhani pledged all possible support for their business communities to bolster two-way trade.
With a population of 80 million, Iran is a major Middle East market, while Vietnam is a gateway to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Vietnam's Ambassador to Iran Nguyen Hong Thach called on Vietnamese businessmen to invest in Iran's garment industry, which has a big market and is a gateway into the Middle East.
