Jamali who was officially welcomed at Sa'dabad Cultural Complex by Iran's First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref on Tuesday has arrived in Tehran along with commerce minister Humayun Akhtar Khan and minister for petroleum and natural resources Chaudhry Naurez Shakoor. They are supposed to hold meetings with top Iranian officials on international, regional and bilateral issues which include border trade between the two states, FTA, and quarantine restrictions on Pakistani crops and fruits.
During the visit, the Pakistani commerce minister would exchange the documents of FTA with Iranian counterpart and accelerate the process of reaching an agreement on border trade. Both sides would also try to identify the commodities which are to be traded in through the Baluchistan border, south western Iran.
Presently, Pakistan and Iran have a trade volume of $394 million annually which needs to be expedited and this objective could be easily materialized when the two states would sign the free trade agreement.
In 1996, Iran imposed a ban on Pakistani wheat and rice saying that the wheat has a disease of fungus and that the same case was the case with rice. Since then, Pakistan has been unable to export these two major cash crops to Iran.
Pakistan had already sent wheat and rice samples to Iran for laboratory tests and hoped that this time Iran would announce disease free crops and start importing the products. In addition, Pakistan would also ask Iran to lift the quarantine restrictions on some fruits such as Kino and mango.
In the oil and gas sector, Iran would discuss the revival of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project which has been overshadowed owing to the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline project. During the visit, Iran would express its concern over the Pakistan’s less interest in the project.
ER/IS
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MNA
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