Pakistan to Establish Markets at Joint Borders with Iran

Pakistan's PM Advisor for Textile and Industry & Production Abdul Razak Dawood announced that his country is to establish markets at its joint borders with Iran. As Pakistani media reported on Sunday, the official added that "The development of similar markets on the border with Iran is also on the agenda of the Islamabad government." His remarks have been made on the verge of the ninth round of Iran-Pakistan joint trade committee meeting, which is to be held in the near future. Lamenting about the US sanctions imposed on Iran, Dawood said that the sanctions have slowed that mutual free trade between the two sides. “... sanctions on Iran are an obstacle to the promotion of trade relations,” he said and added no headway is being made on the independent trade agreement with Iran due to sanctions, Pakistani Dunyanews reported.

In a bid to strengthen bilateral relations and expand cooperation in the fields of trade and commerce, Iran and Pakistan have recently decided to hold new round of meetings of the Joint Trade Committee and the Joint Economic Commission.

On 6 July 2019, heading a high-ranking delegation, the former Iranian Minister of Industry, Mine and Trade Reza Rahmani paid a visit to Pakistan to attend the 8th Iran-Pakistan Joint Trade Committee meeting and to explore avenues of economic cooperation with Pakistani officials.

At the time, the two sides signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for strengthening bilateral trade and economic ties and vowed to remove potential barriers in the way of mutual trade.
The MOU was signed by Reza Rahmani and Abdul Razak Dawood on the sidelines of the Joint Trade Committee meeting in Islamabad.

In November 2019, Observer of Pakistan’s Balochistan province Reza Baloch said that the government of Pakistan decided to launch four border marketplaces in a border shared with Iran for doing trade and business transactions as well as improving livelihood of frontiersmen. - Mehr