Turkey, Iran eye closer financial transfers
Turkey and Iran said on Thursday they want to increase financial transfers between the two countries and double bilateral trade by 2015, a move likely to trouble Western powers trying to squeeze Tehran with sanctions over its nuclear programme.
Washington, which has approved a fresh set of sanctions targeting financial institutions that deal with Iran’s central bank to stem the flow of oil revenues, has warned regional ally Turkey that banks which do business with Iranian entities run the risk of being frozen out of the U.S. financial system.
“Iran is the world’s third biggest producer of oil, and the world’s second biggest producer of natural gas. The target is to make Turkey a bridge for the transfer of these resources,” Turkey’s Urbanization Minister Erdogan Bayraktar, said in closing statements at a Turkey-Iran economic council in Ankara.
“We have discussed working on money transfer between the two countries. Work is under way for Turkey entering the Iranian banking system and Iran entering the Turkish banking system. We plan very important steps on money transfer,” Bayraktar said.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, who attended the meetings, said annual trade volume between the two would increase to $30 billion by 2015, from around $15 billion last year.
“We decided to improve the ties between the countries. The governments will be working on easing the processes,” Salehi said. “We decided that Iranian private sector should invest in power projects in Turkish energy markets.”