NOURNEWS- Iran's Minister of Industry, Mining, and TradeAbbas Ali-Abadi, who is accompanied by Mehdi Safari, Deputy Minister of Economic Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Mehdi Zaighmi, Deputy Minister of Security and Head of the Trade Development Organization of Iran, was welcomed at Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg early on Monday morning by the deputy of the government of St. Petersburg and the Iranian ambassador to Russia.
Iran's Minister of Industry, Mining, and Trade is going to sign the free trade agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Eurasian Union on behalf of Iran during a one-day trip to St. Petersburg while attending some bilateral and multilateral negotiations.
According to the announced schedule, the deputy prime ministers of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia as members of the Eurasian Union will sign this agreement on behalf of their countries.
The last meetings of negotiators of the parties to finalize the text of the agreement were held on Sunday, December 24 in St. Petersburg.
Iran and Eurasia's progress from temporary agreement to free trade
The first joint step between Iran and this union was taken by signing a draft agreement on obtaining preferential export tariffs in Yerevan in 2017, and it was in 2018 that this temporary agreement was signed between the parties for three years.
Examining the statements of the parties revealed that at the end of these three years of cooperation, the parties will decide on a formula to make it permanent, or this process will be stopped completely; But the negotiations of the parties showed that Tehran and the Eurasian capitals are interested in long-term and stable cooperation.
This is how Iran paved the way for the realization of this goal by extending the law on the Temporary Preferential Trade Agreement.
Ayatollah Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi, the President of Iran, on 22 May 2023, in the implementation of Article 123 of the Constitution, "The Law of the Additional Document (Protocol) on the Extension of the Temporary Agreement on the Establishment of a Free Trade Zone between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union and its Member States" which was issued in the 12th public meeting On May 2023, was approved by the Islamic Council and on May 10, 2023, it was approved by the Guardian Council of Iran, and the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade was notified for the implementation of the said protocol.
Details of the Free Trade Agreement
According to the published information from Iranian and Russian sources, the parties of the Free Trade Agreement will completely remove tariffs for 87% of goods in their trade exchanges.
In the meantime, each of the parties prepares a negative list that includes goods that are considered sensitive goods for one of the parties, and it is not possible to remove the tariff.
The remaining 13 percent are related to the so-called negative list. For example, it includes goods that, if we discount them, the industry or agriculture inside Iran will suffer in that area, therefore, to support these domestic industry and agriculture sectors, these sectors are not included in the discount. On the other hand, the countries of the Eurasian Union also present their list of sensitive goods, and in this context, delicate measures are followed to adjust the lists in an equal and fair manner. This agreement is Iran's first multilateral free trade agreement, which is expected to increase Iran's trade with Eurasian countries to 18-20 billion dollars in the next 5 years.
To become effective, this agreement needs to be approved by the Islamic Council and also the parliaments of the five member states of the Eurasian Union to become a law.
NOURNEWS