TEHRAN: India is to open a $500-million line of credit to develop Iran's Chabahar port into a regional trading hub, visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Monday in Tehran.
"The bilateral agreement to develop the Chabahar port and related infrastructure, and availability of about $500 million from India for this purpose, is an important milestone," Modi said.
"We are committed to take steps for early implementation of the agreements signed today," he said at a televised news conference with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani also flew in to Tehran on Monday for the signing of a tripartite agreement between Iran, India and his country to turn Chabahar into a transit hub, bypassing Pakistan.
Rouhani said Iran and India had decided to transform their trading links to the level of "comprehensive economic relations".
He and Modi witnessed the signing of 12 memorandums of understanding, two of them on Chabahar port, on the Gulf of Oman.
They include a deal between Iran's Maritime and Ports Organisation and India's EXIM bank to work out the details of a line of credit to develop Chabahar.
"With India's investment in the development and equipping of Chabahar port and also the credits intended from this country for Chabahar, this port can turn into a great symbol of cooperation between Iran and India," Rouhani said.
Modi arrived in Iran on Sunday on a visit aimed at boosting trade following the lifting of international sanctions under Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers.
On the first visit to Iran in 15 years by an Indian premier, he is also to meet the Islamic republic's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and invited Rouhani to India.
The volume of trade between the two countries over the past nine months reached $9 billion, according to Iran's official IRNA news agency.
Iranian media say India is now seeking to double its imports of oil from Iran.
Tehran was New Delhi's second largest supplier of oil until 2011-12, when economic sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear programme forced India to cut its dependence on Iranian oil.
India still owes Iran $6.5 billion that Tehran was unable to recover because of the international sanctions.
Iranian media said a first tranche of this debt, the equivalent of $750 million, has been paid into accounts held by Iran's central bank in Turkey.
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