Courtesy Iranian Labour News Agency

A member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce says barter of tea with oil between Iran and Sri Lanka is not fair because Sri Lankans will give Iran second or third degree tea as their low quality tea has no customer in the world.

Speaking to ILNA news agency, Masoud Daneshmand talked about barter trade with Sri Lanka and said that China, Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Latin American states and some other countries seek to buy cheap oil from Iran and they also accept Iran’s gas oil and gasoline.

“Sri Lanka except its tea has nothing that avails Iran,  and Sri Lankans owe oil money to Iran since long time ago because they have received the oil and have not paid back money, and for this reason they owe Iran huge amount of money and they are now ready to give tea in exchange of their oil dues.”

Daneshmand said that barter trade in this way is a mere loss for Iran because if Sri Lanka has good and high quality tea, it will definitely sell to other customers and they will give the second or third class tea to Iran under the name of first grade tea and Iran has no way but to get it.

He said this type of barter trade is not fair unless an agreement is signed between the two states on pricing and types of the goods and it is not a good decision to get any goods with any price from the countries because they owe us and we want to settle our account with them.

On the closure of the only refinery of Sri Lanka, Daneshmand said that country like Sri Lanka which is in dire need of gasoline does not close its refinery intentionally to buy cheaper gasoline from Iran and it is not a logical issue because it will create problem inside the country.

He reiterated that Sri Lanka does not have money to buy oil from the international markets to turn it into gasoline and its only sources of revenues are tourism and tea and due to the pandemic its tourism industry has faced problems and since the country has failed to repay its debts to China it has even lost ownership of some of its installations.

Daneshmand went on to say that if Iran is eager to work with Sri Lanka, it should act wisely with full study and through fixing the amount of bartering and adopting a mechanism for pricing, otherwise it is not wise to pump oil to Sri Lanka and to tell them to pay back its money when they afford to.

“This is how the Chinese dealt with Iran and gave any low quality goods to Iran in exchange for oil money because Iran had not signed a certain and fixed agreement with the Chinese  and it only flooded oil to China and asked for goods in return.”

He reiterated that this is not a barter trade that Iran gives oil and instead Sri Lanka says it has no money and Iran can get tear in exchange of its oil dues.