Speed-up assistance or lose Chabahar, hints Iran

[DFI_COAS]

On Chabahar port, the Shipping Ministry moved a Cabinet note for providing $150 million as line of credit but that got held up as India wanted that the draft contract retain a reference to India content

Chabahar port is located in Sistan-Balochistan Province on Iran’s southeastern coast and is of great strategic utility for India which will get sea-land access route to Afghanistan bypassing Pakistan. (Photo: Reuters)

Now out of the harsh Western sanctions, Iran has hinted to India that it could lose out on Chabahar port and the associated railway line to Zahedan if there was further delay by New Delhi in providing monetary support for them.

“A number of economic projects with Iran are required to be implemented at the earliest. The Iranian government has stressed to us at high levels the urgency to extend the necessary financial support for these projects without further delay,” India’s foreign ministry informed the linked ministries last week.

While scheduling an inter-ministerial meeting — to be chaired by Foreign Secretary — later this week, the Ministry of External Affairs told the ministries to consider expediting the lines of credit under consideration as well as altering the existing payment mechanism for crude oil imports.

“Separately, the lifting of sanctions will require modifications in the existing arrangements for payment for India’s oil imports from Iran,” it wrote. The agreement would need to be amended to allow Iranians to collect their entire payment in dollars as the existing one allows 45 per cent of the dues to be paid in rupees.

India’s urgency to arrive at a favourable response follows the planned visit of Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Asia & Pacific Ebrahim Rahimpour on February 4 to hold Foreign Office Consultations with the MEA.

Just days after the US lifted the sanctions, Iranian envoy Gholamreza Ansari said that India’s Iran policy was marked by unnecessary caution and that New Delhi could not follow the policy of patient waiting any more in the changed circumstances.

“I feel private companies in India are keen to move ahead in the Chabahar port project but the government has not shown the same level of enthusiasm in the past,” he said.

Since last August, Iran has been asking for $345 million as credit for the steel/railway project and $150 million for equipment purchases for Chabahar port. However, these loans got delayed following India’s Exim Bank’s refusal to get directly involved during the tenure of western sanctions.

India, in principle, agreed to provide buyer’s credit under the National Export Insurance Account (NEIA) for the steel/rail projects but that got stalled as Finance Ministry wanted more clarity on its “strategic importance” as well as the “Indian content” to make available concessional finance to Indian firms.

On Chabahar port, the Shipping Ministry moved a Cabinet note for providing $150 million as line of credit but that got held up as India wanted that the draft contract retain a reference to India content.

New Delhi has already delayed concluding the commercial contract for the port — considered both a strategic and an economic asset — set for November 5 last year as both governments signed an MoU last May setting a deadline for signing the detailed contract within six months.

‘India’s Iran policy marked by unnecessary caution’

> India’s urgency to arrive at a favourable response follows the planned visit of Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Asia & Pacific Ebrahim Rahimpour on February 4 to hold Foreign Office Consultations with
the MEA

> Just days after the US lifted the sanctions, Iranian envoy Gholamreza Ansari said that India’s Iran policy was marked by unnecessary caution and that New Delhi could not follow the policy of patient waiting any more in the changed circumstances..

> Since last August, Iran has been asking for $345 mn as credit for the steel/railway project and $150 m n for equipment purchases for Chabahar port. However, these loans got delayed following India’s Exim Bank’s refusal to get directly involved during the tenure of western sanctions

- See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/in...ose-chabahar-hints-iran/#sthash.AHDzWQD3.dpuf

 

[ezsasa]

So I guess, Iran is the next chief guest on republic day 2017...

150 mill should not be a big issue....

 

[TheRenegades]

Our bureaucracy & red tape sucks. We need stronger strategic thinkers and doers.

 

[ezsasa]

Our bureaucracy & red tape sucks. We need stronger strategic thinkers and doers.

This time, I don't think this delay is due to bureaucratic red tape as we know it, in all probability this has delayed due to lack of clarity in Iran-US deal.

With gujju-Bhai at the helm of things, we can be rest assured he will try to get the best deal in india's interest.

 

[Vishwarupa]

Will India really hold on to this for 150 Million USD? I have my doubts on this new article & moreover this is from the Presstitute IE.

Whom to believe

 

[amoy]

China eyes investment in Chabahar
Chabahar, April 21, IRNA- Managing Director of China Double View Manufacturers Company, Nick Yi, has said that exploitation of the strategic position of ports and Chabahar Free Zone is very important for Chinese investors, businessmen and economic activists.

Speaking in a meeting with the Economic Affairs Deputy of Chabahar Free Trade Zone, Nick Yi reiterated that Chinese Trade and Economic Companies are eager to invest in Chabahar economic and strategic zone.

He added that the company, which is supported by Chinese Government, groups over 70 companies active in manufacturig airport, railway, highway, bridge, berth, port, urban power and water plants, building and in waterways and petrochemical engineering.

Having AAA ranking in China, this company has over 1,700 technical and professional staff and its machineries worth $530m, he said.

Managing Director of the Chinese company said that the annual turnover of 70 Double View subsidiary companies is over $150b and it is active in 156 countries.

Member of the Presiding Board and the Economic Affairs Deputy of Chabahar Free Trade Zone, Abdol Rahim Kordi, said in turn that Chabahar is regarded as the linkage point of three continents and it would be possible for 800 million residents of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Afghanistan to be connected to oceans via the region.

Chinese investment delegation in a two-day trip to Chabahar visited port infrastructures, berths, Shahid Beheshti and Shahid Kalantari Ports' developing plan, Mokran Petrochemical Company and Chabahar Free Zone.

Chabahar is a free port (Free Trade Zone) on the coast of the Gulf of Oman. It is situated on the Mokran Coast of the Sistan-Balouchestan province and is officially designated as a Free Trade and Industrial Zone by Iranian government. Due to its free trade zone status, the city has increased in significance in international trade.

GWADAR, CHABAHAR TO BE MADE ‘SISTER PORT CITIES’

Gwadar and Chabahar will be made ‘sister port cities’, and railway track will be laid between them on priority, Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Sanaullah Zehri said in a meeting with Ali Osat Hashemi, the governor of the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchestan, on Monday.

“The Chabahar-Gwadar Memorandum of Understanding will be implemented soon,” Zehri said. The plans for a border trade line, a new shipping lane and Iran-Gwadar flights would also be materialised, he added. “We have already formed a joint border monitoring committee in order to prevent human trafficking and drug smuggling.”

Iran quashes talk of undermining Gwadar port

 

[Mikesingh]

Our bureaucracy & red tape sucks. We need stronger strategic thinkers and doers.

Can doling out $1 billion to a country like Mongolia (that most don't know even exists) and has little to do with Indian geopolitics, be called 'strategy'? But providing money for a strategic port like Chabahar which has enormous stakes for India and a strategic rail network from there to Afghanistan seems to be way down in the priority list of the MEA.

Idiots! If we lose out to China here, it's curtains for our grand strategy of dominating the Strait of Hormuz and handing it out to China which already controls the Pakistani port of Gwadar. It would be a double whammy. We need to wake up from our slumber and act fast before it's too late..

 

[amoy]

Will China Secure an Iranian Port?
MICHAEL RUBIN / APR. 26, 2016


port of Gwadar, its work to upgrade the port of Chittagong in Bangladesh, its outreach to Sri Lanka, rumors of Chinese work on the Marao Atoll in the Maldives, and Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Perhaps now, thanks in part to the normalization that has accompanied the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the so-called Iran nuclear deal, China is on the verge of adding one more pearl. The Islamic Republic News Agency

The Islamic Republic News Agency reports that selection of Chinese firms to invest in Iran’s main Indian Ocean port of Chabahar. Ditto Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization. Chabahar has long been a backwater. Its heyday was actually in the nineteenth century as a British Indian telegraph station. There is no discernible industry near it, nor does it compare in size to ports like Bandar Abbas and Bushehr. Whereas Chinese and Pakistani officials argue that Gwadar is part of a larger commercial plan to encourage trade given the parallel upgrades to the Karakorum Highway from northern Pakistan into China, it’s hard to make the same argument with regard to Chabahar and Iran.

Too many proponents of the JCPOA dismiss concerns about other aspects of Iranian behavior—its support for terrorism, its development of ballistic missiles, its genocidal obsession with Israel — by arguing that the nuclear deal was limited to constraining Iran’s nuclear program and nothing more. Putting aside arguments that the JCPOA didn’t even accomplish that aim, to take such a myopic view toward the issue highlights the lack of any holistic strategic vision in senior U.S. policy circles. U.S. adversaries — be they Iran, China, Russia, North Korea or others — are each seeking to bolster their own strategic position, working with one another when necessary. That the White House, State Department, and Pentagon ignore such Chinese expansion in waters long considered crucial to U.S. and European energy interests as well as to democracies like India suggest a looming problem on the horizon, albeit one which Washington will ignore until it is too late.

Perhaps it is time to ask: What are China’s aims in the Indian Ocean? Are they really limited to securing an energy corridor? And, conversely, where might Sino-Iranian military ties be going, and to what ultimate end?

 

[salute]

bs from bazaaru indian media...................................................