PESHAWAR, Nov 8: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Iran`s counsel general in Peshawar will work together to arrange visits of trade delegations and facilitate businessmen to explore bilateral trade promotion opportunities.

According to a press release issued here on Friday, KPCCI leaders and Iran`s Peshawarbased counsel general have agreed to the need of exchanging sector-specific trade delegations, growing bilateral trade between Pakistan and Iran, exploring investment opportunities, and promoting trade on barter basis.

The KPCCI press release quoted the Iranian counsel general, Hassan Darwaish, during his visit to the Chamber, ashaving said that Iran attached importance to its bilateral trade with Pakistan.

He concurred there was a need to facilitate trade and business communities of the two countries to explore investment and business promotion opportunities in an attempt to grow the size of bilateral trade between Iran and Pakistan.

According to the press release, the visiting Iranian official held out an assurance to the chamber to facilitate exchange of trade delegations between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Iran and in this respect he invited the KPCCI leadership to visit Iran and hold meetings with the businessmen over there to explore business opportunities.

He assured to look into the KPCCI president Zahidullah`s demands that he made duringhis welcome address vis-à-vis redressing problems faced by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa businessmen in opening letters of credit while doing business with Iran.

The KPCCI leader invited the Iranian official`s attention to play a role in promoting bilateral trade on barter basis and growing formal bilateral between Iran and Pakistan.

He said the size of bilateral trade could be increase from the existing $1 billion mark to $10 billion per year by facilitating business communities of the two countries.

He, however, said improvement in bilateral trade could be achieved if governments of the two countries worked closely with businessmen from the two sides and facilitated them in utilising investment opportunities amply available if explored intelligently.