Iranian Deputy Minister of Industry, Mine, and Trade Alireza Peimanpak said on Saturday that the country has bartered as much as $3 billion worth of goods with other countries over the past one year.
Peimanpak, also the head of Trade Promotion Organization of Iran (TPO), said that the country has prepared the needed infrastructure for barter trade with countries such as Pakistan, Turkey, Russia, Serbia, India and China.
Iran is seeking barter trade with different countries in an attempt to neutralize the financial restrictions of tough sanctions imposed on Tehran over the past years.
In a meeting between a visiting Iranian private sector delegation to Pakistan and Pakistani central bank officials on Wednesday, the two sides reviewed the implementation of a barter trade mechanism between the two countries.
President of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines, and Agriculture (ICCIMA) Gholam Hossein Shafei, who is heading the Iranian delegation to Pakistan, said that the volume of trade between Iran and Pakistan is “limited and not defendable”.
Barter trade can be a good way for increasing the level of Tehran-Islamabad trade at present, Shafei said, adding that a large number a commodities are in both countries that can be bartered.
Iran reached a landmark nuclear deal with six world powers – namely the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China – in 2015 which led to the removal of all the sanctions on the country.
The US administration under President Donald Trump, however, unilaterally withdrew from the multinational accord in 2018. The country re-imposed sanctions on the Iranian economy and even threatened other countries that they would be punished by Washington if they refuse to follow these unilateral penalties.