TEHRAN – Director-general of the Malian Foreign Affair Ministry’s Asia and Oceania Office has said his country is ready to cooperate with Iranian companies for extraterritorial cultivation, the portal of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (TCCIMA) reported.

Speaking in a meeting with the TCCIMA Deputy Head for International Affairs Hesamedin Hallaj on Saturday, the Malian official called on Iranian companies to expand agricultural activities in Mali, saying that his country is fully prepared to provide suitable land and water for agriculture to Iranian companies.

Emphasizing the high capacity of cooperation between the two countries, he stressed that his country does not have a complicated bureaucracy for the economic activity of Iranian companies and it is fully prepared for cooperation with Iranian companies.

“Mali is the third-largest economy in Northwest Africa, but unfortunately financial and economic relations between Iran and Mali are not at the level of political relations between two countries; While in the fields of agriculture, mining, and handicrafts, there is a lot of potential for cooperation between the two countries,” he said.

Having two large rivers, Mali has abundant water resources and suitable land for agriculture, the official said, adding that the country’s Agriculture Ministry and the finance institutions are ready to transfer land and water to Iranian companies for cultivation.

He also informed about his country's need for chemical fertilizers for agriculture, including phosphate and urea fertilizers, and said: “I have an order for 260,000 tons of urea fertilizer for a company in Mali right now. If Iranian producers are ready, they can sign contracts with financial companies to export chemical fertilizers to my country.”

Further in this meeting, Hallaj referred to the low volume of economic relations between the two countries and noted that this issue is due to the lack of knowledge about the two sides' potentials and capacities and stressed the need to activate the relations between the two countries' chambers of commerce.

EF/MA