Negahdari referred to transit corridors as Iran’s most important economic opportunity with regard to Uzbekistan, saying that the Uzbek Government pays special attention to the Islamic Republic of Iran to take advantage of the Iranian transit route.
Qalibaf’s recent visit to the Republic of Uzbekistan took place in a situation where stabilizing the balanced foreign and neighborliness policy and developing regionalism as the main pillars are on the government’s agenda, he added.
He noted that the visit was aimed at strengthening bilateral ties in economic, political, and cultural fields.
Iran and Uzbekistan as two countries in the same geographical area and in a common civilizational area are facing the necessity of promoting comprehensive bilateral relations, he stated.
Iranian speaker's tour to Uzbekistan indicates Tehran-Tashkent mutual understanding on the need to remove the shortcomings and improve the level of bilateral relations, Negahdari said.
Referring Iran-Uzbekistan mutual capacities for increasing the level of relations, he said that Uzbekistan with a distinct geographical and geopolitical position in the heart of Central Asia as the immediate neighbor of four other countries in the region and with a population of more than 30 million people in an area covering nearly half a million kilometers, enjoys a strategic and a significant position in Central Asia.
Based on the statistics, the volume of trade between Iran and Uzbekistan in nine months reached $407m, of which 310 million dollars accounted for Iran's exports to Uzbekistan and $97m for Iran's imports from this country.
But there is the capacity to boost the volume of relations to about one or even two billion dollars per year, he said.
Fortunately, during Qalibaf's visit, important decisions were made regarding economic cooperation in the fields of trade, investment, energy, agriculture, transportation, joint investment in the southern ports of Iran, especially in the Chabahar Free Zone, and also mutually in the Uzbek free zones.
Undoubtedly, regional diplomatic movements and the achievement of bilateral and multilateral agreements in various regions, namely in Central Asia, are in line with Iran’s special economic considerations, especially stabilizing Iran’s position in the modern global economy and specifically in the global and regional value chain.
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