New Delhi, Nov 7 : The Iranian Agriculture Minister has said that barter trade with neighbours is one of Tehran’s top policies, proposing the Pakistani side to use local currencies to solve problems resulting from the foreign sanctions on Tehran, Mehr News reported.
A meeting was held between the Iranian Minister of Agriculture, Seyyed Javad Sadati Nejad, and the visiting Advisor to Prime Minister of Pakistan for Commerce and Investment Abdul Razak Dawood in Tehran on Sunday.
Sadati Nejad said that Iran and Pakistan can use any opportunity to complement each other.
According to him, Iran enjoys the potentiality to export dates and apples to Pakistan and in return, it can import sesame and rice from its southeastern neighbour, the report said.
In his remarks, Sadati Nejad pointed to the problems resulting from the anti-Iran sanctions that put hurdles on the way of Iran’s trade with neighbours.
Iran and Pakistan must use local currency in order to solve the problems caused by the sanctions, the Iranian minister said, the report added.
The Agriculture Minister also said that using a barter trade system with neighbours to circumvent the sanctions is one of the top policies of the new Iranian administration, the report said.
Dawood, for his part, said that any improvement in trade and economic cooperation with Iran is very important, adding that the Iran-Pakistan trade volume should be expanded, especially in the field of agriculture.
Iran and Pakistan play an important role in linking the regional countries of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan, the Pakistani official added.
Referring to the two countries’ potentialities, he said: “Pakistan has rice and Iran has oil and petrochemicals, which we can exchange,” the report said.(IANS)