Iran, Pakistan Sign Strategic Plan for Trade Cooperation

In a post on his Instagram account on Friday night, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian gave a report on his visit to Islamabad and Karachi and meetings with top Pakistani officials.

“This trip was made with the aim of speeding up the process of implementing past agreements, focusing on economic and trade cooperation, planning for future developments, following up on cooperation agreements and discussing the joint political and security concerns of both countries within the framework of the policy of expanding the neighborliness policy,” he stated.

“Although the volume of bilateral trade has grown well over the past 20 months, it is not satisfactory, and our next step is to increase it to five billion euros. Therefore, to increase and expand cooperation, at the end of the meeting between the high-ranking economic delegations of Iran and Pakistan, presided over by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Diplomacy Mr. Safari, we signed the document of the five-year strategic plan for trade cooperation between Iran and Pakistan together with the Pakistani foreign minister,” Amirabdollahian added.

“I also had a valuable meeting with Mr. Shahbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s Prime Minister. In that meeting, while receiving an official invitation for President Raisi from the Pakistani government, we discussed the meetings between the official delegations of the two countries over political, economic, trade, tourism and border issues,” the foreign minister noted.

At the conclusion of his three-day visit to Pakistan on Friday evening, Amirabdollahian and his Pakistani counterpart Bilawal Bhutto Zardari evaluated the results of the Iranian delegation’s visit.

Zardari said the visit was the most successful trip by a foreign minister from another country during his tenure as the top diplomat of Pakistan.

He added that Islamabad and Tehran have laid the groundwork for the expansion of their ties.