TEHRAN, July 16, (AFP): Iran and China on Saturday signed a series of agreements worth $4 billion (2.8 billion euros) for infrastructure projects as part of a broader bid to boost trade volume between the two nations, Iranian state media reported.
The bilateral agreements span cooperation in water, mining, energy and industrial sectors.
As part of a $500 million (354 million euros) deal, China agreed to provide Iran with 60 energy recovery incinerators, which are to be installed within a year in major cities and in Iran’s northern tourism hub along the Caspian sea.
China also pledged to boosts its imports of Iranian mineral products, state TV reported.
Iran’s Vice President Mohammad Javad Mohammadi-Zadeh told the television that China was Iran’s leading economic partner, with last year’s trade volume reaching $30 billion (21 billion euros).

Signed
The agreements were signed during a visit by He Guoqiang, a senior executive of the Chinese Communist Party, who heads a delegation visiting Iran. He was received by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“The main objective is to quickly bring our economic and trade exchanges to $100 billion,” Ahmadinejad said during Saturday’s meeting, according to his website.
“China, with a strategic vision, wants to strengthen its cooperation with Iran, because it is in the interest of both nations as well as regional countries,” He Guoqiang was quoted as saying by the website.
China’s ambassador to Tehran told IRNA recently that bilateral trade would reach $40 billion (28 billion euros) this year.
China and Iran have become major economic partners in recent years, partly thanks to the withdrawal of Western companies in line with sanctions against the Islamic republic over its contentious nuclear drive.
Beijing, which now buys about 20 percent of Iranian crude, opposes the policy of the United States and its European allies seeking to strengthen UN sanctions against Iran, which they believe is seeking nuclear weapons.
Tehran denies this, saying its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful objectives.


Iraq will be the key player in international oil politics over the next two decades, the country’s top government official for the energy sector said on Saturday.
“If we continue along the path we are on, Iraq will over the next two decades be the country that sets oil policy in the world in terms of price, supply and demand,” Deputy Prime Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said at a conference of Iraqi diplomats in Baghdad.
In 2009, Iraq signed 11 contracts with foreign energy companies to exploit its vast oil reserves and dramatically ramp up crude output to as much as 12 million barrels a day (bpd) by 2017, from around 2.7 million bpd currently.
And in October, the country reported a major increase to its crude reserves.
“The world cannot survive without oil and demand will increase by 20 million barrels per day in the next 20 years,” Shahristani, a former oil minister, said in his speech at Iraq’s foreign ministry.

“Our country has entered the market at the right time because demand will increase, because the world needs more oil and no country can provide this other than Iraq.”
Iraq’s projections are at odds with those set out by the International Monetary Fund, which expressed doubt in March over the country’s ability to meet its long-term targets for oil ouput and said output could rise to more than five million bpd by 2017, rather than the 12 million Baghdad estimates.
The IMF cited the need for huge investments in port facilities, pipelines, desalination plants for water to be injected into oil fields, and storage facilities.
Crude exports account for around 90 percent of Iraq’s government revenues.