TEHRAN –In a meeting between Iran and Turkey’s presidents on Monday in Ankara, the two sides stressed expansion of economic and banking ties and emphasized the need for following up on a plan for trade via national currencies, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) said.

“Mutual talks between Iranian and Turkish Presidents, held today, majorly revolved around improvement of economic, trade and banking relations between the two sides besides improvement of bilateral trade volume and removal of banking difficulties, and in particular, development of cooperation between the central banks of the two countries to increase doing common monetary transactions through national currencies,” CBI portal quoted Abdolnaser Hemmati as saying on social media.

According to Hemmati, the two sides also agreed that Turkey’s central bank would hold training courses on open market operations for Iranian bankers. 

Rouhani arrived in Turkey on Sunday night to take part in a trilateral meeting with his Russian and Turkish counterparts in order to discuss a political resolution to the crisis in Syria.

A delegation comprised of Iranian ministers of foreign affairs, defense, energy, agriculture, the CEO of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) and other Iranian top officials are accompanying Rouhani in this visit.

Earlier in April 2019, The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Turkey is taking into account establishing new trade mechanisms with Iran, like the INSTEX system set up by European countries, to avoid the U.S. sanctions reimposed last year on exports of Iranian oil, Reuters has reported.

Cavusoglu reiterated Turkey’s opposition to the sanctions and said Ankara and neighboring Iran needed to keep working to raise their bilateral trade to a target of $30 billion, around triple current levels, according to Reuters.

“Along with the existing mechanisms, we evaluated how we can establish new mechanisms, like INSTEX...how we can remove the obstacles before us and before trade,” Cavusoglu told a news conference after talks with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif.

EF/MA