TEHRAN- The Chairman of Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines, and Agriculture (TCCIMA) said that legal barriers to banking relations between Iran and Russia would be lifted soon, the Tasnim news agency reported on Tuesday.

As reported, Masoud Khansari made the remarks on the sidelines of the economic conference on improvement of trade cooperation between Iran and Russia in Tehran on Tuesday, where a Russian delegation comprised of Russian tradesmen, headed by the Minister of Investment and Development of the Sverdlovsk region of the Russian Federation Alexei Orlov, participated in.

According to the TTCIMA head, Tehran-Moscow trade volume stood at $1.2 billion seven years ago but the figure has fallen recently.

“The recent sharp drop of the Russian Ruble against the dollar has negatively affected mutual trade between the two sides and Iranian traders are not interested in exporting their products to that destination accordingly,” he said, “Measures are being taken to improve the situation and to increase bilateral trade volume with Russia via removing banking obstacles as well as easing the process of opening credit lines.”

In past November, Iran and Russia held their 12th joint economic committee meeting in Moscow, discussing ways to give a boost to the bilateral trade.

Iranian Communications and Information Technology Minister Mahmoud Va’ezi and Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak co-chaired the meeting, in which the two sides drafted a roadmap for increasing the volume of transactions, the IRNA news agency reported.

Officials from private sectors of the two countries explored opportunities for cooperation in the fields of energy, oil, electricity, commerce, and science.

Va’ezi also held a meeting with Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov at the time.

On the sidelines of the meeting, Shuvalov referred to the lifting of sanctions against Iran as a positive measure which will notably improve economic relations between the two countries.

Russia will definitely pay attention to establishing long-term trade ties with Iran, he added.

HJ/MA