Published: 0306 GMT April 07, 2019
Tehran, Baghdad to increase banking ties
The Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Abdolnasser Hemmati, on the sidelines of his Sunday meeting with the Iraqi Finance Minister Fuad Mohammed Hussein, said that banking relations between Tehran and Baghdad will be eased to facilitate transactions between the two countries' businessmen.
Hemmati said that regarding the ever increasing trade transactions between the two sides and Iran's exports of gas and oil to Iraq, besides the Iranian private sector's exports to the country, the exports volume from Iran to Iraq has increased recently to $12 billion per year, reported Fars News Agency.
There exist some banking difficulties about which negotiations were made with the Iraqi minister; to ease Iranian tradesmen's activities in Iraq, the impediments will be removed soon, Hemmati said.
"Our transactions with Iraq are done using our national currencies," he said, "The major part of our earned financial resources are in dinar."
"Iraq has paid $1 billion of its arrears to CBI," he added.
In a related front, early in February, the central banks of Iran and Iraq finalized an agreement to establish a bilateral payment mechanism to ease trade and the flow of money between the two neighboring countries.
Hemmati and the Governor of the Central Bank of Iraq Ali Mohsen Al-Allaq met on February 5 in Baghdad, where they signed an agreement on a payment mechanism which is to facilitate the settlement of Baghdad's debts to Tehran.
The deal mainly focused on a payment channel aimed at facilitating the settlement of the Arab country's debts to Tehran over gas and electricity imports.
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