Official: U.S allowed to some companies to export pharmaceuticals to Iran
Member of the Board at Tehran Chamber of Commerce Alireza Kolahi said to ILNA correspondent that US administration has allowed several drug companies to export its products to Iran.
Speaking to ILNA economic reporter, Vice-Chairman of its Trade Promotion Commission added “In the past few days, I have spoken to a number of executives of foreign pharmaceutical companies, and they have announced that several US pharmaceutical companies have corresponded with U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office and been able to obtain permits for exporting food and medicine to Iran.”
“They have given the names of several banks to transfer money to the US Treasury and they accepted two Iranian banks and rejected three Turkish banks.”
Yonhap News Agency reported Last week that South Korea announced it is in talks with the United States over Iran's demand for Seoul's resumption of exports of humanitarian goods to Tehran after US sanctions have virtually halted such trade.
The member of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce said “failure to join the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will limit Iran’s economic interaction with the world.” Adding that FATF is an International law and we must finally decide whether we want to be a country that relates to the world or not.
The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said on October 18 that it has given Iran a final deadline of February 2020 to tighten its laws against money laundering in compliance with the global watchdog’s financial standards.
One of the actions Iran is required to take to appease the FATF is to ratify the CFT, the convention combating the financing of terrorism.
Asked to the question that Iran's central bank is under US sanctions and no financial transfers are made, so joining to such bill can change the current situation or not, Alireza Kolahi said “Now we have limited bank transfers in the matter of importing food and medicine and joining the convention will solve part of problems we are facing.”
“On the other hand, if we do not join it, we have last this limited bank transactions and we will have difficulty importing food and medicine,” Iranian official confirmed.
“We will not tighten sanctions by our own hands,” he remarked.
Mahmoud Vaezi, the presidential chief of staff, said on October 30 that Iran should use the opportunity to join the FATF in order to avoid self-inflicted sanctions.
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