TEHRAN- Iran shares land or water borders with 15 countries namely UAE, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Saudi Arabia. Expanding trade with the neighboring countries is one of the major plans that the Iranian government has been pursuing in recent years.

Expanding trade with the neighboring countries is one of the major plans that the Iranian government has been pursuing in recent years.

Among Iran’s neighbors, Pakistan is one of the countries with which Iran’s trade has increased in the past year.

As announced by the Pakistan’s Ministry of Commerce, the value of Iran’s exports to Pakistan increased by 13 percent in 2023 as compared to 2022.

The data released by the Pakistan’s Ministry of Commerce indicate that Iran exported non-oil commodities worth $944 million to its neighbor Pakistan in the past year, while the figure stood at $834 million in 2022.

Iran imported commodities valued at $155 million from Pakistan during the mentioned year, $134 million more than the figure for 2022.

Also, the latest report by the International Relations and Trade Development Committee of Iran’s House of Industry, Mining and Trade indicates that Iran has exported commodities worth $1.7 billion to Pakistan during the first ten months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2023-January 20, 2024).

Ruhollah Latifi, the spokesman of the International Relations and Trade Development Committee of Iran’s House of Industry, Mining and Trade, said that among Iran’s neighbors, Pakistan was the fourth top destination of Iranian products in the 10-month period.

The official also announced that exporting products worth $527 million to Iran, Pakistan stood at the fifth place among the neighboring countries, that supplied goods to Iran in the first 10 months of the present year.

As previously reported, Iran’s non-oil exports to Pakistan increased by 18 percent in the previous Iranian calendar year 14001 (ended on March 20, 2023).

Pakistan was Iran’s fifth largest export market in the previous Iranian year, importing non-oil products worth $1.488 billion from Iran.

Iran imported non-oil goods worth $842 million from Pakistan last year, up 170 percent from the previous year.

The intertwining of economic, security, and transit relations between Iran and Pakistan has made the relations of the two countries beyond the neighborhood and turned them into strategic partners with common interests at the regional level.

Having more than 900 kilometers of joint border can lead to closer and more cooperation between the two countries in areas such as transit corridors and bilateral trade.

Iran and Pakistan signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in mid-January 2023 to facilitate bilateral trade between the two countries.

The MOU was signed by the former Head of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) Alireza Peyman-Pak and the Head of the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) Muhammad Zubair Motiwala.

Based on the MOU, which was signed on the sidelines of Iran’s Exclusive Exhibition in Karachi, the parties pledged to exchange business information, support each other’s private sectors, and provide the conditions and context for the presence of their trade delegations in the other country.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Peyman-Pak said that signing this MOU was indicative of the two sides’ determination to remove the obstacles in the way of bilateral trade and prepare the ground for the businesspersons of both sides to bolster cooperation.

He considered the holding of exclusive exhibitions, exchanging trade delegations, and investment in joint production units as positive steps for knowing the capacities and needs of the two countries and expressed hope that such events would continue.