Tanzania has reiterated its commitment to working closely with Iran in strengthening bilateral ties between two countries.
The commitment was expressed on Friday evening by Zanzibar Minister for Trade and Industrial Development, Mr Omar Shaaban.
He made statement when officiating the celebrations of Iran's 45th revolution anniversary held in Dar es Salaam.
"I would therefore like to seize this opportunity to reassure you that Tanzania will continue to work closely with Iran to ensure a sound social-economic and political cooperation is promoted and sustained in our bilateral relations," the minister asserted.
Furthermore, he said the relations between Tanzania and Iran are historical and continue to grow from day to day, noting that history can be traced back from the 9th to the 12th centuries, during the arrival of Persian merchants.
"This tremendous interaction between the two countries has made great connection in cultural aspect, where there are even some similarities of words in both Swahili and Persian languages," he said.
- In the spirit of furthering the bilateral relations he noted that they aspire to expedite the process of holding a fifth round of a Joint Permanent Commission (JPC) between Tanzania and Iran.
"Some of the proposed agreements have reached a reasonable stage of negotiations and hopefully in the near future they will be signed," he added.
More so, he said Tanzania is looking forward to enhancing more cooperation in sectors ranging from agriculture, oil and gas, technology transfer, development projects, health sector, education; textile industries and manufacturing and other key areas.
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In line, the minister appealed for a concerted effort to enhance trade, investment and tourism for the mutual benefit of the two countries.
"This is an area which we both need to improve and strengthen to enhance our trade and investment relations," he told the ambassador.
In a related development, he expressed his profound gratitude to Iranian govern - ment and companies that visited Tanzania in early October, last year, for expressing interest to buy beef and live animals from Tanzania.
"Tanzania has a huge number of quality livestock comprising of 25.8 million cattle, 16.7 million goats, 8.7 million sheep...these huge numbers of animals indicate Tanzanians' readiness to supply the growing Iran's market with quality meat and live animals," he underlined.
Earlier on, Iran's Ambassador to Tanzania, Hossein Behineh, said the two countries have already agreed on accelerating the process of holding of joint commission meeting and facilitating travels for citizens of the two countries.
"In this regard, Tanzanian citizens, in the near future, will visit Iran without require - ment of advance visa," the diplomat said. He further noted that last year, the trade volume of the two countries was 60 million US dollar, saying Iran exported goods valued at 40 million dollar and imported 20-million-dollar goods from Tanzania.
