Page 25 - IRANRptDec19

and industrial town’
Presidents of Iran, Turkey discuss building up trade, switching to non-dollar transactions
East Azerbaijan and Ardabil provinces in Iran. Despite centuries of separation, the Azeris on both sides of the border speak a similar dialect of the Azeri language.
Reports in Persian-language media stated that Iran and Azerbaijan planned to invest funds in half a dozen or more JVs, but the initial loan amounts were not readily available. Initial phase investment in the six projects was set to be around $4mn, they added.
Iran Press News Agency reported that one of the newly struck agreements included a “technology and industrial town” that would be situated near the city of Ardabil in Iran.
The governor of Ardabil Province met with Azerbaijan’s deputy economy minister on October 19 and visited some border regions selected for establishing joint industrial parks, it added.
The director of the Iran National Innovation Fund, Ali Vahdat, described the signing of the six MoUs between the Iranian knowledge-based companies as “just the beginning.”
The presidents of neighbouring Turkey and Iran focused on expanding bilateral trade, forming banking ties and switching trade transactions to contracts drawn up in either the Turkish lira (TRY) or Iranian rial (IRR) rather than the USD during a meeting in Ankara, Iran’s central bank governor said on September 16.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani met Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a bilateral meeting conducted on the sidelines of a trilateral meeting that included Russian President Vladimir Putin and dealt with joint efforts to address the conflict in Syria.
Governor of Iran’s central bank Abdolnaser Hemmati wrote on social media that Rouhani and Erdogan were intent on building up trade—the countries, which both have a population of slightly over 80mn people, have talked of a target of $30bn per annum, around triple the current level—and squeezing the dollar out of the picture where possible.
Both Iran and Turkey are concerned at the high exposure to US sanctions that results from trading in USD, as is Russia which has also in recent years been working on building up its non-dollar trade.
5.3​ FDI
Iran FDI 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
FDI net inflows (BoP) (USD bn)
3.649 4.277 4.662 3.05 2.105 2.05 3.372 5.019
FDI net inflows (% of GDP)
0.749 0.733 0.778 0.653 0.485 0.531 0.805 1.105
FDI net outflows (% of GDP)
0.049 0.044 0.226 0.04 0.001 0.031 0.025
source: World Bank
25​ IRAN Country Report​ December 2019 www.intellinews.com