YEREVAN — Senior Armenian and Iranian officials reaffirmed their governments’ pledges to significantly increase trade between the two neighboring countries when they inaugurated a large Iranian shopping center just outside Yerevan on Monday.
The Iran Trade Center was opened during a ceremony attended by Armenian Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan, Iranian Minister of Industry, Mine and Trade Mohammad Atabak, Deputy Minister Narek Hovakimyan, Trade Attaché of the Republic of Armenia in the Republic of Iran Vardan Kostanyan, Member of the National Assembly, Member of the Armenia-Iran Friendship Group Narek Babayan, businessmen, and heads of industrial centers.
The 18,000-square-meter retail and whole facility will consist of over 100 sections selling mostly Iranian-made consumer goods, chemicals and other industrial products. It is a joint venture set up by Iran’s ParsHilal Caspian Group and the Multi Group of Gagik Tsarukyan, an Armenian businessman and politician.
The area includes 107 exhibition booths of various sizes, a conference room for business (B2B) meetings and an open space for holding events and festivals. The opening of the trade center will greatly contribute to increasing the level of trade between Armenia and Iran and strengthening Armenian-Iranian business ties.
“The largest Iranian trade center in the world has been opened in Armenia,” the Iranian ambassador in Yerevan, Mehdi Sobhani, said during the opening ceremony.
“Trade between Iran and Armenia has grown by leaps and bounds, and I am sure that thanks to this center, greater impetus will be given to the development of commercial relations between the two countries,” he said. “The leaders of Armenia and Iran have planned to increase the volume of trade to $3 billion, and we must make efforts to make that a reality.”
In turn, Armenian Minister Papoyan expressed hope that a similar trade center will soon be opened in Tehran. He noted a sharp increase in trade turnover between Armenia and Iran, the size of which exceeded $700 million according to last year’s figures.
‘We aim to raise this figure to $1 billion in the near future, and later to $3 billion. Iran is not just a neighbor for Armenia, but a friendly country with close trade-economic and political relations between them. Our peoples know each other very well, have a warm attitude towards each other. There is a huge undiscovered potential for the development of economic relations,’ Papoyan noted.
Armenian-Iranian commercial ties are expected to receive a major boost from the energy sector in the years ahead. Armenia plans to significantly increase the presently modest imports of Iranian natural gas after completing the protracted construction of a new power transmission line through which it will export more electricity to Iran.
This will cement warm political ties between the two nations. Their geopolitical importance for Iran was underscored recently by Tehran’s angry reaction to Russia’s renewed push for the opening of a land corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Syunik, the only Armenian region bordering the Islamic Republic. Iranian leaders fear that such a corridor would undermine Armenia’s territorial integrity and eventually strip Iran of its common border and direct transport links with its sole Christian neighbor.
