Iranian and Turkish business firms held a one-day conference in Istanbul on Friday to boost their cooperation on trade and investment, said Iran’s Ambassador to Turkey Alireza Bigdeli.
During the conference, Bigdeli discussed Iran economic capacities in 2016, further noting that if the two countries want to meet the target of $30 billion annual trade, their private sectors must raise their trade to $25 billion per annum, Fars News Agency reported on Saturday.
Last year, Iran-Turkey trade volume stood at $14 billion, but the two countries plan to raise it to $30 billion.
Turkey was the 6th biggest importer of Iranian non-oil goods in the first seven months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21- September 22), according to Iran Customs Administration.
Iran exported $787.335 million of non-oil goods to Turkey and imported $1.835 billion of non-oil goods from the country.
Meanwhile, Turkey was the 6th major importer of Iranian non-oil goods in the past Iranian calendar year, which ended on March 20, with importing $2.158 billion and exporting $3.822 billion of non-oil goods from and to Iran, respectively.
The two countries also maintain close energy ties. Turkey is one of the major customers of Iranian gas and imports 10 billion cubic meters of the product from Iran every year.
According to the EU statistics agency Eurostat, Iran’s exports of crude oil to Turkey rose by 9 percent to 3.339 million tons in the first seven months of 2015.