New Delhi, Jul 16 (UNI) India on Thursday termed the reports of Iran ending its agreement with New Delhi for two key projects -- the second phase of Chabahar Port and the Chabahar-Zahidan railway project as “speculative”.
Referring to Chabahar Port, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava while addressing the mediapersons during weekly online briefing said, “Despite the difficulties posed by the sanctions situation, there has been significant progress on the Port project. An Indian company has been operating the Port since 2018 and has steadily scaled up the traffic at the Port.
Since December 2018, 82 vessels have been handled there including 52 in the last twelve months alone.
The Port handled 12 lakh tonnes of bulk cargo and 8200 containers, he said.
“Proactive measures are currently underway to increase the usage of Chabahar Port, both for Afghanistan and Central Asia,” Mr Srivastava said.
As far as Chabahar-Zahidan railway project is concerned, the Indian government had appointed IRCON to assess the feasibility of the project.
In collaboration with Iranian firm CDTIC, IRCON has completed the site inspection and review of the feasibility report.
“Detailed discussions were thereafter held on other relevant aspects of the project, which had to take into account the financial challenges that Iran was facing,” Mr Srivastava said.
In December 2019, the issues were reviewed in detail at the 19th India-Iran Joint Commission Meeting in Tehran.
“The Iranian side was to nominate an authorized entity to finalize outstanding technical and financial issues. This is still awaited,” the spokesperson added.
On reports of development of Farzad-B gas field in Iran, Mr Srivastava said that the matter is under discussion.
The spokesperson said ONGC was involved in the discovery stage.
“Follow-up bilateral cooperation was however impacted by policy changes on the Iranian side. In January 2020, we were informed that in the immediate future, Iran would develop the field on its own and would like to involve India appropriately at a later stage,” he said.
The reports of dropping the partnership with India comes as Iran finalises a sweeping 25-year economic and security partnership with China worth $400 billion.
The partnership would vastly expand Chinese presence in banking, telecommunications, ports, railways and dozens of other projects.
UNI ASH/VT SHK2105