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ECONOMY
A security guard is seen at the Iran-Kurdistan Region border crossing of Haji Omaran on January 3, 2018. File photo: Safin Hamed / AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region —The value of Iran's trade with Iraq through the Kurdistan Region's border crossings during the last fiscal year, which ended on March 19, stood at $3.8 billion, according to the Iranian trade officials.
Forty-two percent of the total exports to Iraq during the last fiscal year took place through the Kurdistan Region’s Parvizkhan, Bashmakh and Haji Omaran border crossings, spokesperson of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration Rouhollah Latifi said.
Parvizkhan border crossing saw the entry of three million tons of goods, worth $1.4 billion. Just over $1.1 billion worth of Iranian goods traveled through Bashmakh, and $754 million through Haji Omaran, Latifi added.
According to the Iranian government, trade volume between Iran and its Arab trade partners in the region was worth $22 billion during the same period of time, Farzad Piltan, director-general of Iran's Trade Promotion Organization (TPO)’s Office of Arabian and African Countries said.
Iraq accounted for $9 billion of Iran’s $12.5 billion total exports in 2019, Piltan said, with Iranian agriculture, construction, and dairy products and farmed fish making up most of its outbound trade. The United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Bahrain were other major export destinations.
The Iraq-bound export figures exclude approximately $3 billion worth of electricity and natural gas sent annually to supplement the country’s ramshackle power grid.
While trade volume figures have continued to stand at the $12 billion mark, the devastating economic impact of the coronavirus has dealt a significant blow to trade volume between Iraq and Iran in 2020.
Iran fast became the regional epicenter and one of the world’s worst-hit countries by the pandemic after recording its first case in Qom in February of this year.
As cases of infection began to seep into Iraq – many of which were people who had returned from Iran – Baghdad began restricting travel, shutting its five main border crossings with its eastern neighbor in mid-March. Two months on, all but one of these crossings remain shut after Zurbatiya in eastern Iraq’s Wasit province was re-opened for trade on Wednesday.
The Kurdistan Region did not follow Baghdad’s lead, however, choosing to keep its three major border crossings with Iran open throughout the pandemic period – if only to trade. KRG authorities only closed off the border during a three-day complete shutdown of all movement from April 4 to 6.
Heavily reliant of exports to boost an economy struggling yet further amid the pandemic, Iran has said it wants crossings with Iraq reopened immediately.
Baghdad has yet to relent, leaving its border crossings shut. However, an Iranian representative to the Kurdistan Region told Rudaw over the weekend that cross-border negotiations for their re-opening continue.
"There are continued efforts from the Islamic Republic of Iran officials, border customs, and from the provinces on both sides' borders... for the borders to be reopened, [but] with necessary measures be taken against the virus," said Javad Karimiyan, in charge of Iran's economic affairs at the country’s consulate in Erbil.
Exempt from Iraq’s coronavirus trade restrictions were deliveries of natural gas, of which Iran is a major supplier. Iraq relies on imports of natural gas to fuel its electricity plants in the south and center of the country in periods of high use.
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