TEHRAN, Dec 30 (NNN-IRNA) – Iraq paid “part” of its energy debt to Iran through a barter agreement, an Iranian official was quoted as saying.
“Iran has bought commodities as part of Iraq’s debt for electricity, and they will enter the country in the next few days,” Secretary-General of the Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce, Hamid Hosseini, declared.
On Monday, the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) issued a statement, after press reports about a decline in Iranian natural gas exports to Iraq, saying the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity owed more than five billion U.S. dollars in gas imports from Iran.
NIGC’s note said, three billion U.S. dollars of that money were blocked in Iraq’s Trade Bank of Iraq and unusable, and the rest had not been paid.
Hosseini noted in his remarks that, Iran continues to sell its western neighbour about 700 million U.S. dollars in electricity every year, despite a decline in non-oil exports.
