Official: Iraq Increases Imports from Iran by 13%

_"Statistical figures of Iran's exports to Iraq in the first five months are positive and they show a 13% growth in value and 66% growth in weight," Secretary-General of Iran-Iraq Joint Economic Commission Seyed Hamid Hosseini told FNA on Sunday.

He added that the volume of Iran's exports to Iraq also stood at 10mln tons, noting that $3.907bln worth of goods have been exported to neighboring Iraq in the first five months of the current year.

Iran exported some $13 billion worth of goods and services to neighboring Iraq in the last local calendar year (March 21, 2018-March 20, 2019), which marked a 37% increase in a year-on-year comparison.

Yahya Al-e Eshaq, who heads the Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce, said in July that the value of the Iranian export to Iraq increased by 37 percent in the 12-month period.

He said a major part of Iran’s export to Iraq has been technical and engineering services offered to the Arab country by companies from the Iranian private sector.

Al-e Eshaq said Iranian contractors had been awarded more than $4 billion worth of projects in construction and industry sectors in Iraq, adding that more than half of those contracts were being executed.

He said the value of Iran’s export to Iraq could meet a target of $20 billion in the near future, insisting that there were “some extraordinary areas for cooperation” between the two neighboring countries.

The comments came hours after Iraq announced that it had launched its own financial mechanism to settle payments with Iran amid some unprecedented sanctions imposed by the United States on Tehran’s trade and banking activities.

Source:(YJC)