TEHRAN – Iran is going to send 10 new commercial attachés to its economic partner countries by the end of the current Iranian calendar year, an official with Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) announced.

According to Mohammad-Sadegh Ghanadzadeh, Iran currently has 20 commercial attachés active in other countries and the number will be increased to 30 with new attaches starting their work, Mehr News Agency reported.

“There is currently one commercial attaché in each of the neighboring countries, two in China, Vietnam, and Africa, each, and one business advisor in the European countries of Serbia and Hungary,” Ghanadzadeh said.

According to the estimates, we should have 60 commercial attachés to provide good coverage for our target countries, and in our estimation, more than one advisor is considered for neighboring countries such as Turkey, Pakistan, India, and Iraq, he noted.

Maintaining relations and developing them, removing trade barriers between countries, solving the problems of businessmen of both sides, and laying the groundwork for joint programs, including exhibitions and commissions, are among the duties of commercial attachés.

In September 2023, Mohammad Rajab-Nejad, the head of TPO’s Department of Commercial Attachés and Trade Centers, said TPO was going to attract capable economic experts to be sent as commercial attaché to target countries.

“We currently have 17 commercial attaches based in Iraq (Baghdad), Oman, China (Beijing), Armenia, India, Qatar, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Belarus, Russia, Kenya, Algeria, Turkey, Kazakhstan, South Africa, UAE and Uzbekistan,” the official said.

Attachés are also about to be sent to Serbia, Brazil, and Pakistan, and they will be deployed soon, he added.

“We are planning to send two more attachés to the cities of Sulaymaniyah (Kurdistan region) and Basra in Iraq and two more advisors are also going to be sent to Shanghai and Guangzhou in China,” Rajab-Nejad said.

According to the official, sending attachés to Indonesia, Turkmenistan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Hungary, Poland, Syria, and Saudi Arabia was also on the agenda.

Rajab-Nejad previously said that the number of Iran’s trade centers in foreign countries has also increased significantly over the past two years, so that currently Iran has trade centers in 40 different countries around the world.

EF/MA