Iran Ready to Cushion Coronavirus Effect on Trade

The Trade Promotion Organization of Iran (TPOI) has plans to undermine the adverse effects of the outbreak of a novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19, on national and international trade and business activity of the country, TPOI Head Hamid Zadboum said.

Zadboum said on Monday that a Special Committee will be held at the TPOI to prevent the damages caused by COVID-19.

In response to a question on the impact of outbreak of the coronavirus on Iran’s trade and measures taken by the TPOI for minimizing the adverse effects of the epidemic, Zadboum stated, “Coronavirus has spread in many countries in the world. Not only it [coronavirus] has severely affected trade and business activities of the country, but also it has influenced the global trade significantly.”

Turning to the closure of borders of various countries on each other as a result of outbreak of the coronavirus, he added, “These measures will definitely reduce travels and will also lead to the decreased volume of trade activities in the world.”

Trade Promotion Organization of Iran is seeking strategies to control the critical situation and reduce adverse effects of outbreak of coronavirus on domestic trade, he emphasized.

To this end, a special committee, which is composed of the TPOI, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been formed in line with compensating the damages caused by the spread of the coronavirus on Iran’s trade, Zadboum added.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says the new coronavirus afflicting the world has over the past 24 hours spread far more rapidly outside China than inside but its path is still unknown.

Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing in Geneva on Monday that almost eight times as many cases had been reported outside China as inside in the previous 24 hours.

The never-before-seen virus, recently named COVID-19, has now infected more than 90,000 people in more than 70 countries and territories, and killed over 3,100 people — the vast majority of them in mainland China.

“The number of cases in China continues to decline,” the WHO chief said.

On Monday, China reported 125 new cases, which brought the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 80,151. Thirty one new deaths were also reported in mainland China, bringing the death toll there to 2,943.

Outside China, a total of more than 8,700 confirmed cases and over 125 deaths have been reported.

“We are in uncharted territory,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday. “We have never before seen a respiratory pathogen that is capable of community transmission, but which can also be contained with the right measures.”

He said the epidemics in the Republic of Korea, Italy, Iran, and Japan were “our greatest concern.” The four countries have reported either high confirmed infections or deaths outside China.