Page 22 - IRANRptMar21

Iran, EU trade falls 21% in Q3 2020 but Iranian exports gain 51%
Tehran chamber reports $5bn decline in Iran-China 9M trade
Iran ‘exporting manufactured nanotechnology products to 50 countries’
Trade in goods between Iran and European Union member states amounted to €1.06bn in the third quarter of 2020, marking a 21% y/y decline.
Of the trade, Eurostat data showed Iran exported €206.4mn, representing a gain of a 51.2% y/y.
Germany remained the top destination for Iranian goods. It imported €72.2mn worth of goods from Iran, up 67.8% y/y.
The Netherlands was in second place with imports worth €54.4mn, an expansion of more than 1,065%.
Iran will be counting on a big expansion with EU states and other countries should this year bring much improved relations between Tehran and Washington with the coming to power of US President-elect Joe Biden. However, there was a setback in mid-December when EU states ​withdrew from a conference on business potential with Iran in protest at the execution of dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam, who was living in exile in Paris before he was captured in a sting operation.
Iran-China trade stood at $13.4bn in the first nine months of 2020 compared to $18.17bn in the same period of 2019, according to the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture’s (TCCIMA’s)’s Office of Economic Investigations.
Iran’s exports to China fell 15% y/y to $6.4 bn, while imports received by Iran from China dropped 14.7% to $7bn, it added.
Impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and US sanctions targeted at Iran, including its oil industry, hindered two-way trade, TCCIMA said. Approximately 80% of China's imports from Iran are oil. The remaining one-fifth of imports is largely made up of mineral and chemical products.
The US has been attempting to drive Iranian oil exports down to zero. Iran has resorted to grey market methods in striving to maintain a reasonable level of oil shipments. It is likely that the value of such ‘under the radar’ consignments to China is not covered by the trade figures presented by the chamber.
In the past year, Iran and China have stepped up work on drafting a 25-year strategic trade, investment and security pact that could potentially have a value of hundreds of billions of dollars. Facts about the putative Sino-Iranian pact are few and hard to come by, with Beijing saying little, and the Islamic Republic’s leaders wary of a backlash from nationalists claiming Iran is about to become a Chinese client state. The ​Financial Times​ reported in July last year that under the deal, “China would invest in airports and ports, telecoms and transport, oil and gasfields, infrastructure and banking, acquiring assets as it addresses Iran’s unmet investment needs.
“In exchange, it would take massive, discounted deliveries of Iranian oil over those 25 years, to feed an import need that last year reached 10m barrels a day. This is roughly what Saudi Arabia, Iran’s arch-rival, produces.”
Analysts have said that Iran might back away from the deal, or scale down its size, if it can improve its relations with the US and European Union.
Iran is exporting manufactured nanotechnology products to 50 countries, according to the secretary-general of the Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council (INIC), as cited by Mehr News Agency.
Saeed Sarkar reportedly said that there are 300 knowledge-based nanotechnology companies in Iran, which produce 715 products overall. Around 25% of the country's science-based production was accounted for by the nanotechnology segment, he was also quoted as saying.
The INIC has said that 24% of Iran's patents are registered in the field of nanotechnology and that the technical knowledge related to 90% of
22​ IRAN Country Report March 2021 www.intellinews.com