Page 28 - IRANRptFeb22

5.2 FTA, multilateral agreements
Iran and China’s top diplomats meet to launch 25-year cooperation agreement
Iran urges Russia to step up efforts to create an EEU FTZ
Iran and China on January 14 launched their 25-year economic and political cooperation agreement, while Beijing at the same time reaffirmed its opposition to unilateral sanctions imposed by the US against Iran.
The deal is widely regarded as a roadmap that could allow for many billions of dollars of trade and investment if it is fully utilised. It also brings Iran into China's Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure scheme intended to stretch from East Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in the Chinese city of Wuxi, in Jiangu province, to launch the cooperation deal, signed in March last year.
The Chinese foreign ministry said the agreement would deepen Sino-Iranian cooperation in areas including energy, infrastructure, agriculture, health care and culture, as well as cyber security.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi will this week visit Moscow for a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Both Moscow and Beijing back the ongoing efforts at the Vienna talks to relaunch the nuclear deal signed by Iran and six major powers—the US, Germany, France, the UK, China and Russia—in 2015 to curb Tehran’s nuclear development programme in return for the lifting of sanctions imposed on Iran. China has kept up substantial purchases of Iranian oil in recent years despite the threat of US sanctions directed at buyers of crude from the Islamic Republic. The trade is conducted on the grey market.
Iran is pushing Russia to step up the pace in finding an agreement for a permanent free trade zone (FTZ) that would apply to the Islamic Republic and its trade flows with the five countries of the Moscow-led European Economic Union (EEU).
Mehr News reported that at a November 18 meeting between Iranian Deputy Minister of Industry, Mining and Trade Alireza Peyman Pak and Russian Ambassador to Tehran Levan Jagaryan, the Iranian official made clear Iran’s desire for faster work on achieving the zone. The EEU bloc is made up of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia. Trade between Iran and the EEU member states has for around two years been conducted according to a temporary three-year preferential trade agreement (PTA). Iran’s sanctions-hit economy remains in poor shape with a fresh bout of jitters on the Tehran Stock Exchange and the failure of the Iranian rial (IRR) to pull away from all-time lows two of the present concerns on local investors’ minds. Gold prices, meanwhile, are finding record highs.
5.3 FDI
Iran FDI 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
FDI net inflows (BoP) (USD bn)
4.662 3.05 2.105 2.05 3.372 5.019 2.373 1.508
FDI net inflows (% of GDP)
0.778 0.653 0.487 0.533 0.807 1.127 0.523 0.2
FDI net outflows (% of GDP)
0.226 0.04 0.001 0.031 0.025 0.017 0.016
source: World Bank, CEIC
28 IRAN Country Report February 2022 www.intellinews.com