Iran and Pakistan have decided to boost the level of their annual bilateral commercial exchange to as much as $10 billion after the two countries experienced a 38 percent growth in trade that reached more than $2 billion last year.
Mehrdad Bazarpash, Iran's Minister of Roads and Urban Development during his recent trip to Islamabad as the head of the Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation, met with Pakistani officials and jointly opened a new chapter of trade development to reach the trade horizon of $10 billion, according to IRNA.
The agreements made during the past year led to an increase in trade between the two countries, with Pakistan acquiring the sixth place among Iran's export destinations with a share of 4.2 percent of the country's total exports last year, the report said.
According to the available statistics, Iran-Pakistan trade increased from $1.5 billion in 2022 to more than $2 billion last year, meaning a growth of 38 percent in terms of value and 23 percent in terms of volume between the two countries.
Increasing the volume of trade between the two neighbors was among the agenda of the visit of the President Ebrahim Raisi and the Minister of Roads and Urban Development to Pakistan and that culminated into signing of eight cooperation documents in various fields, with the two sides hoping to enhance bilateral trade exchanges to $10 billion.
For this purpose, both Iran and Pakistan in the meeting of the Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation agreed to increase the level of cooperation, especially in the field of transportation and infrastructure development, as one of the basic principles of trade and economic activity.