NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Tehran on May 22-23 in a bid to increase India’s deeper engagement with Iran, a sanctions-free nation now. India is looking at doubling its oil imports from Iran apart from getting rights to develop a giant gas field, and the Chabahar port.
The Ministry of External Affairs said the visit will provide thrust to expand bilateral cooperation and mutually benefit from new opportunities in the wake of lifting of secondary sanctions against Iran earlier this year.
Iran was at one point of time India’s second-biggest oil supplier till other countries took lead due to sanctions on it. Modi’s Tehran tour is seen as one of the most important visits of the year. Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj have already visited Iran to do the groundwork for the PM’s tour.
“At the invitation of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Dr Hassan Rouhani, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will pay an official visit to Iran on May 22-23, 2016,” the Ministry of External Affairs said while announcing the visit. During the visit, Modi will call on the Supreme Leader of Iran and will hold talks on a wide range of subjects of mutual interest with Rouhani.
“India and Iran share longstanding civilisational ties. Iran is situated in India’s extended neighbourhood and the two countries have significant overlap in their economic and security space. The visit of Prime Minister to Iran will seek to build on these commonalities by focussing on specific cooperation in regional connectivity and infrastructure, developing energy partnership, boosting bilateral trade, facilitating people-to-people interaction in various spheres and promoting peace and stability in the region,” the MEA statement said.
India has several issues to sort out with Iran primary being to clear the nearly $6 billion dues it owns to Tehran for crude oil imports. This backlog is due to payments stuck for oil imports to India when Iran was under sanctions for its nuclear programmes. However, the Indian ambassador in Tehran Saurabh Kumar said the matter is resolved now and
India will clear all the dues in Euros. Turkey’s Halkbank has been identified to facilitate the payment. Besides, PM’s visit is also going to give fresh impetus to India’s investment plans in Chabahar Port for which New Delhi has committed $20 billion.
India also has interests in development of Farzad B block in the Farsi gas field for which $1 billion has been promised. Apart from petrochemicals, fertilizers, mines and minerals are other areas of Indian interest. The two countries will also have deeper collaboration in counter terrorism and security.
