Turkey welcomes agreement with Iran on border transit

Ankara, Jan 20, IRNA – Chairman of Turkey's International Transport Companies Association Cetin Nuhoglu welcomed signing of an agreement between Iran and Turkey to resolve transit dispute between the two countries. He said the agreement will solve the 20-year-old problem of transit fees. Top officials from Iran and Turkey signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) aimed at facilitating trade between the two countries as well as ending a three-month-long dispute over truck transit fees. In a statement released in the Association's Website, Nuhoglu said the transit problem between the two countries had turned into a crisis in the past three months, but with this agreement, the situation returned to normality. According to the new transit fee agreements, Iranian trucks crossing the joint border are not required to pay any transit fees, effective from midnight of Friday, January 16, while the Turkish trucks transiting goods between Iran and Turkey are supposed to pay 0.3 euro as price difference of each liter of fuel they purchase in Iran. Nuhoglu said the agreement helps Turkey reach its export objectives of 2023 and promote its exports to Central Asian countries. The dispute broke out on October 10 when Turkey started charging Iranian trucks $31 per 100 kilometers of drive inside Turkish territory. Iranian officials retaliated the move by doing the same. Turkey later raised the rate to $63 per 100 kilometers. Tehran said it levied the $31 fee on Turkish trucks due to difference between fuel prices in the two countries. Turkish fuel stations, for their part, stopped selling fuel to the Iranian trucks.