At a meeting with the Indian Minister of Finance Arun Jaitley, Karbasian recalled that Iran’s Ministry of Economy was in charge of the Joint Economic Commission between the two countries and voiced readiness to hold a meeting of the Commission early into the year 2018.
The Iranian side, while recounting on economic achievements of the country and stressing the need to bolster bilateral ties, said India’s 450-million-dollar credit line for development of Chabahar Port and cooperation in the field of transportation were instances of measures leading to expansion of relations between the two sides.
Later at the meeting, India’s Jaitley confirmed remarks of his Iranian counterpart and voiced satisfaction towards recent developments in ties. He later delineated several venues for collaboration between the two countries and welcomed the idea of reinvigorating ties in various arenas. The two sides also emphasized the need to resolve all existing banking issues.
At a separate meeting between Minister of Economy of Afghanistan Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal and Iran’s Karbasian, both parties stressed the strategic significance of the region and the parts played by the two neighboring states in eliminating certain barriers to expansion of economic ties and called for deeper relations in various sectors.
Iranian economy minister, while pointing to presence of hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals in Iran, described various measures taken for them specially as regards education.
He later called for organizing trade exchanges at borderlines of the two countries as well as for further customs collaborations.
The meeting also stressed the need to continue joint efforts in transportations areas and completion of railroads connecting Afghanistan to western Iran and later to Europe and vice versa.
Arghandiwal of Afghanistan, for his part, appreciated Iran’s support for his nation and government and, while stressing the need to strengthen ties, called on Iran to complete the railroad project on the Afghan soil.
Masoud Karbasian also underlined that formation of several joint working groups in various sectors was an important measure in line with elevation of bilateral relations.
The meeting also touched upon the trilateral agreement between Iran, Afghanistan and India over trilateral cooperation in transit areas and called for meeting of the three countries’ presidents in Tehran.
Economy Minister Karbasian is in Washington DC to attend 2017 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group on October 13-15.
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