India- Iran FTA to boost bilateral trade

 The Dollar Business Bureau Iran has reportedly proposed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India in a move to boost the bilateral trade and investment. The talks on this matter have come for discussion during the Indian Commerce Secretary, Rajeev Kher’s, recent visit to Tehran for the first meeting of joint working group of both the countries, according to the reports. The information on this matter was given by the Commerce Secretary Rajeev Kher, who also said to have responded over the matter saying, ‘India will consider the matter positively and will respond after taking an appropriate mandate from the relevant stakeholders’. The Commerce Secretary also said that both the sides have also agreed upon cooperation in sectors including petroleum, petrochemicals and raw materials like gold, stones and rare earth metals, among others. He further said that Iran is keen to develop its rail & power infrastructure and irrigation facilities taking advantage of India’s strength in engineering and projects exports. He also expressed India’s willingness to extend buyers credit line to Iran. On the sanctions being imposed by the western nations on Iran, Kher said lifting of trade sanctions will also help Iran in increasing oil imports to India. The Commerce Secretary further said that the deal would also benefit India, where India will have opportunity to access markets of some parts of Europe and Africa. In this regard, he said Iran and India have also discussed the expansion of the International North-South Corridor transit route, which is a shorter route for India to access Russian and eastern European markets. This route will drastically reduce transactions costs for India and India has already done a study for the facilitation of the same, he added. He further informed that India will be organizing a conference in June aimed at popularizing the route, adding that all the countries, stakeholders, private sector representatives from shipping and rail industry, besides government officials, will be invited for the conference. Iran is very keen to increase trade relations with India and hopes that India can play a major role in fulfilling its ambition to increase its share in the global trade, he added.    

This article was published on April 11, 2015.