Iran and Pakistan have agreed to resume rail freight transport between the provincial capitals of the two neighbors’ border regions.

The agreement was reached during a trip by the regional director of Iran’s Rail Transportation Co., Seyyed Mostafa Davoudi to Pakistan.

The two sides agreed to recommence rail freight transport between Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchistan in Iran’s southeast and Quetta, the main city in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan Province.

The deal reopens route for weekly freight train transport which has mostly been blocked over the past few years.

Back in March, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani paid a two-day state visit to Pakistan. His trip was aimed at enhancing bilateral trade and economic ties with the neighboring country.

President Rouhani described Iran’s relations with Pakistan as strategic, saying that the two nations shared many commonalities.

Tehran and Islamabad agreed then to adopt necessary strategies and make use of their capacities to increase the volume of bilateral trade.

Speaking at a business conference with Rouhani on March 26, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said Islamabad and Tehran had signed an agreement to increase their annual trade volume to USD five billion by 2021.

Trade between Pakistan and Iran fell to USD 432 million in 2010-11 from USD 1.32 billion in 2008-09, according to the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan.

In the presence of the Iranian president and Pakistani premier, the two countries’ officials signed six documents for cooperation in different fields of trade and commerce, insurance, culture, higher education, health and medicine on Friday.

By Press TV