OIC AIMS FOR 20 PERCENT INTRA-OIC TRADE GROWTH

By Nor Faridah Rashid

KUALA LUMPUR, April 30 (Bernama) -- The Organisation of the Islamic
Conference (OIC) is working towards achieving 20 percent intra-OIC trade growth
in 2015 from 16.67 percent last year.

"We are now trying to finalise to overcome all impediments to achieve this
goal," its secretary-general Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said here.

"We need a legal framework for that and we are trying to do that," he said
in an interview with Bernama recently.

Ihsanoglu said there were certain agreements that needed ratifications and
signatures of certain countries in order to achieve the 20 percent goal.

"We are building up the mechanism and we hope to achieve this target which
would be a major transformation of the economic build-up in our countries," he
said.

Ihsanoglu said the OIC, which groups 57 member states, has an active
economic sector and it had initiated meetings to realise the Dakar-Port Sudan
railway line, which will connect West African countries with East African
countries.

In the agro sector, the OIC is also actively promoting cooperation like in
the cotton industry, which played an important role in the socio-economic
development of more than 20 OIC member states, with a share of 28 percent of the
world's total cotton production, 24 percent of total consumption, 36 percent of
cotton exports and 27 percent of cotton imports, he added.

Ihsanoglu said the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), an organ of the OIC, was
doing "wonderful work" in helping OIC member countries to build up their
infrastructure and development apart from financing intra trade.

Asked about member countries' commitment to intra-trade, he said they were
very committed.

"However, sometimes the OIC finds that there are slow implementation on the
bureaucratic level, which we try to overcome," he added.

On the current global economic slowdown and how it had affected businesses
in Islamic nations, Ihsanoglu said in many of the OIC countries the economic
crisis had not affected the banking system like in the case of Turkey and
Malaysia where the banking system was well structured and speculative elements
were not there strongly.

However, the economies had been affected because of the lack or decrease in
exports which would negatively affect the growth of economies in many of the OIC
member countries, he said.

But this scenario had also created an opportunity to do more trade among OIC
member countries, according to Ihsanoglu.

"How this will figure out at the end of the year we don't know. But I have
some measures, some indications that certain bilateral trade and size of trade
among our countries have been increasing. This is just a personal observation,"
he said.

"The figures would appear when the real statistics of 2009 are out. Even now
some of the statistics for 2008 are still not out yet," he added.

The OIC, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, has mandated
its Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation to increase the
level of intra-OIC trade.

In his keynote address at the two-day International Conference on Islamic
Economies and the Economies of the OIC Countries which ended yesterday,
Ihsanoglu said the share of the OIC member states in the world's gross domestic
product (GDP) has increased.

He said in 2007, with almost 22 percent of the world population, the OIC
member states accounted for 6.8 percent of the world's total GDP and 9.8 percent
of its total merchandise exports against 6.1 percent and 9.2 percent
respectively in 2006.

In 2008, the share of the OIC member states in the world's GDP was projected
to amount to 7.3 percent, he added.

The conference was organised by the International Islamic University
Malaysia and IDB in conjunction with the university's 25th anniversary and OIC's
40th anniversary.

-- BERNAMA