A communiqué issued here by the Russian Ministry of Agriculture on Tuesday confirms an upcoming meeting in Teheran between the head of that ministry, Alexandr Tkachov, and his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Hojjati, to analyze the prospects in that sector.
Agricultural food supplies from Russia to Iran grew 3.1 percent in 2015, to 484.4 million dollars, according to the Russian Federal Customs Service (FTS, in Russian).
The source added that Russia's main exports were cereals, which accounted for 91 percent of the total, including 62.2 percent of wheat and its mix with rye, more than 23.5 percent of barley and 5.1 percent of sunflower oil.
Tehran, in turn, exported goods worth 194.3 million dollars to Russia, accounting for a 0.7-percent increase.
Iran's major imports from Russia, according to the FTS, were vegetables
(51.7 percent, including 29.8 percent of cucumber and 11 percent of cabbage), fruit and dry fruit (40.3 percent, including 8 percent of grapes) and 4.7 percent of grape and vegetable byproducts.
Nikita Maslenikov, an expert with the Institute of Modern Development, predicted that in the first semester of 2016, Russia will replace with Iranian products the volumes that it has stopped importing from Turkey, as a result of the sanctions imposed after the downing of its Su-24 plane that was fighting terrorism in Syria.
He recalled that after a recent visit to Tehran by Trade and Industry Minister Denis Manturov, the two countries agreed on a trade flow worth five billion dollars, including Russian-made machinery.
In the field of energy, the Russian corporation Tecnopromexport and the company that runs Iran's thermoelectric plants closed a deal to build a four-block plant that will generate 350 megawatts, according to TASS.
The protocol also establishes the additional construction of a desalination plant that will supply 200,000 cubic meters of drinking water a day to the city of Bandar Abbas, in Hormozgan province.
Moscow will also build the second and third 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactors in the Iranian power plant of Busher, where a similar generator has been operational since 2011.
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PL-14/MNA