Iran, EAEU Finalize Agreement on FTZ

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the EAEU will observe the basic principles of World Trade Organization and create the proper conditions for trading all goods in the framework of commerce collaborations, the EAEU press office reported, according to Azeri News on Monday.

Iran and the EAEU negotiated for 18 months for creating the free trade zone, during which Iran's Minister of Communications and Information Technology Mahmoud Vaezi and Minister for Trade of the Eurasian Economic Commission examined different dimensions of the agreement.

The Eurasian Economic Union is an economic union of states located primarily in northern Eurasia. A treaty aiming for the establishment of the EAEU was signed on 29 May 2014 by the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, and came into force on 1 January 2015. Treaties aiming for Armenia's and Kyrgyzstan's accession to the Eurasian Economic Union were signed on 9 October and 23 December 2014, respectively. Armenia's accession treaty came into force on 2 January 2015. Kyrgyzstan's accession treaty came into effect on 6 August 2015.

Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia are the current member states of the union, with a combined GDP of $2.2 trillion, $ 3.1 trillion of industrial products, and $ 877 billion trade with non-member countries, equal to 7.3 percent of world export and 3.2 percent of world import.