Governors of Sardasht in Iran’s West Azarbaijan Province and Qala Diza and Rania in Iraqi Kurdistan Region have discussed promotion of bilateral relations.
The three officials discussed the required infrastructures for an increase in trade, transactions in a bid to help their respective economies to flourish.
Iran is among Iraq’s top trading partners and is also the main supplier of many goods to the Iraqi market including cement, building materials, fruits and vegetables, consumer goods, and food products.
With all the commonalities between Iran and Iraq, Tehran has only 12%, or 12 billion dollars of the annually import market in its neighbor to the west.
There are currently 15 terminals along the 1,600-kilometer border through which the majority of export takes place.
Iran exported $918 million worth of goods via its land borders in Kermanshah province to Iraq during the first half of the Persian calendar year (March 21-September 22), reported IRNA. Officials in Kermanshah province said 2.42 million tons of goods were exported during the period. Parvizkhan border crossing is Iran’s biggest export terminal and 52% of the country’s non-oil export to Iraq passes through Parvizkhan.
That is while during the same period, $208 million worth of goods were exported to Iraq through Shalamcheh border in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, showing a 54% rise compared to the same period last year.
Iran is also one of the main exporters of electricity to Iraq. In January 2011, Iraq started to import 650 megawatts of electricity from its eastern neighbor, and the number has currently risen to 1,200 megawatts.
Back in June, the head of the Iraqi Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Jaafar al-Hamdani, announced that the volume of trade between Iraq and Iran reached $12 billion in 2013.
