Iran, Finland Trade Can Rise Tenfold: Minister
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Finland’s Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Kai Mykkanen said the volume of his country’s trade with Iran could easily grow ten times.
“We have huge potential for increasing our trade with Iran,” Mykkanen, who is in Tehran as part of a delegation led by Finnish President Sauli Vainamo Niinisto, told the Tasnim News Agency.
“(The volume of trade between Iran and Finland) can easily grow tenfold,” he said, adding that the European country’s exports to the Islamic Republic can reach 500 million euros.
Mykkanen further noted that the two countries on Wednesday signed four memoranda of understanding (MoUs) in the fields of energy, communications, finance and investment.
As for existing problems in the way of transfer of money, he predicted that with practical measures needed to be taken by both Tehran and Helsinki, those issues would be resolved in a few months.
The Finnish president arrived in Tehran on Tuesday and held talks with senior Iranian officials, including Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani, on Wednesday.
The trip is one of a number of high-profile visits to Iran by European leaders in the past few months.
There has been growing interest in ties with the Islamic Republic after Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) on July 14, 2015 reached a conclusion over the text of a comprehensive 159-page deal on Tehran’s nuclear program and started implementing it on January 16.
The nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) terminated all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran.
