TEHRAN - Regarding their present potentials, Iran and Turkey can enhance the volume of their bilateral trade up to $100 billion per annum, Mahmoud Va’ezi, the Iranian minister of communications and information technology said in Tehran on Saturday.

“Both sides are resolved to reach a 30-billion-dollar trade volume in the near future, the goal which has been set by the two countries’ presidents in their recent meeting,” Va’ezi said in a meeting with Erdal Bahcivan, the chairman of Istanbul Chamber of Industry, IRNA reported.

During the meeting, Va’ezi highlighted the measures taken by Iranian and Turkish banks on the ways to ease transactions and lamented that “Turkish banks are under the influence of westerners but we hope that they will take an independent attitude.”

The Turkish official, for his part, emphasized on the key role that the private sector plays in hitting the determined trade volume and noted that the Turkish administration is in charge of removing banking barriers and lowering customs tariffs to set a proper environment for expansion of common trade ties.

Elsewhere in his remarks, he addressed the issue of improving joint telecommunication relations and asked for establishment of a Turkish information technology park in Iran.

On April 16, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in a meeting with the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Tehran, underlined his country’s decisiveness in expanding vigorous relations in various economic fields, specifically in banking, and noted that some measures have been done on the way to reinforce cooperation between the two sides’ stock exchange markets.

The Turkish prime minister also underscored the vitality of converting the current preferential trade agreement (PTA) between the two countries into free trade agreement (FTA) in future.

Earlier in the same month, Vaezi visited Davutoglu in Iran-Turkey Joint Economic Committee, where expressed Iran’s readiness to develop ties with Turkey in banking and tourism sectors.

Davutoglu, for his part, said that his country is keen to invest in Iran’s different sectors, including tourism, emphasizing that the administrations of both countries should direct their private sectors toward the realization of shared economic aims.

HJ/MA