The agreement was reached on Tuesday in a meeting between Iran’s Deputy Minister of Economy Abbas Memarnejad and his Turkish counterpart Cemalettin Damlaci, who is in Tehran on a state visit.
“The volume of Iran-Turkey trade exchanges reached roughly USD16 billion in 2011, and soared past USD22 billion by the end of 2012. Given the upward trend in trade ties between the two countries, the figure USD35 billion would not be out of reach,” Damlaci was quoted as saying.
The Turkish official added that in 2012, Iran exported USD12 billion worth of products to Turkey in return for USD10 billion dollars of imports.
Memarnejad, for his part, gave an upbeat assessment of growing trade between the two countries.
“...We hope that all organs involved in foreign trade would undertake efforts for the realization of the determined objectives, particularly enhancing the volume of trade exchanges between the two countries to USD35 billion a year,” the Iranian official said.
In January, Iran’s Ambassador to Turkey Bahman Hosseinpour said the volume of trade transactions between Tehran and Ankara can reach as high as USD100 billion per year.
According to official data released in November 2012, Iran was the third major trade partner of Turkey in the first three quarters of 2012.
Turkey’s imports from Iran hit their highest monthly total in March 2012 with over USD1.63 billion.
Meanwhile, the highest monthly exports from Turkey to Iran were recorded in July 2012 with a total of more than USD2.15 billion.
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