Speech of Secretary General at the 24th Meeting of the Follow-Up Committee of the COMCEC

Date: 14/05/2008

SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY PROF. EKMELEDDIN IHSANOGLU SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE ORGANISATION OF THE ISLAMIC CONFERENCE AT THE 24TH MEETING OF THE FOLLOW-UP COMMITTEE OF THE COMCEC ANTALYA, REPUBLIC OF TURKEY 13-15 MAY 2008. Bismillahi arrahmani rahim Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Assalam Alaikum wa-Rahmatullahi wa-Barakatuh I am very pleased to take the floor on this auspicious occasion to express my profound gratitude to the Government and People of the Republic of Turkey for the generous hospitality and the excellent organization of this meeting as well as fine arrangements in this beautiful resort of Antalya. I would like to pay tribute to the constant support of the Government of the Republic of Turkey, in particular to the support of the State Planning Organization to the activities of the COMCEC, which has organized successfully twenty-four annual ministerial meeting. The 11th Islamic Summit Conference of the OIC was just concluded with great success on 13-14 March, 2008, in Dakar, Republic of Senegal. The Conference adopted a New Charter for the OIC, which will re-energise the Organisation. It also adopted regular resolutions to assist Member States in the areas of economic affairs; but mostly, there was a common understanding that Muslim countries need to forge a new economic partnership for the benefit and prosperity of Ummah. The economies of the OIC Member States are rich with natural assets, financial capitals and human resources. These endowments are excellent ingredients for a sustainable development recipe. However these three assets need to be synergised to be translated into real economic power. Therefore the OIC Member States need to forge a new economic partnership in order to address the current challenges, such as, debt burden, poverty, food shortages, desertification, illiteracy, diseases and epidemics. This partnership should follow within the OIC, the South-South cooperation policy of encouraging economic and technical cooperation activities among the Member States as well as create avenues for joining efforts to move from being simple exporters of raw commodities to manufacturers of higher value-added products and technical know-how. The Dakar Summit has also adopted an important Resolution to reduce the debt burden of Member States, particularly African countries. This priority area, which was initiated by the OIC Ten-Year Programme of Action (TYPOA) as the total amount of Debt owed by the OIC Member States culminated to US$773.64 billion by 2006, with fifteen countries classified as heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs). Many OIC Member States allocates huge funds for debt servicing, which could have been spent for development and poverty alleviation. A solution to this debt crisis is, therefore, a prerequisite to poverty alleviation and sustainable growth in many of our LDCs. The freed resources from debt servicing can be directed at the social sectors (health and education), the sector of infrastructure and at enhancing the productive capacities of the LDCs. Poverty has exasperated other problems in the Islamic world, such as, illiteracy, malnutrition, diseases and crimes. An estimated 285 million people or 26% of the population of the OIC Member States live in absolute poverty, lacking basic human needs such as food, health, education and shelter. This poverty situation is, therefore, alarming and need to be tackled from a new angle of lack of basic human needs, as suggested by the Chairman of the OIC Summit. In this context, I will do my utmost to have the OIC General Secretariat, act as a platform of policy dialogue and exchange of views for poverty alleviation. The OIC Ten-Year Programme of Action, which is compatible with the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) established a Fund within the IDB to address poverty reduction. So far, only 26% of the total amount of US$ 10 billion has been pledged by the Member States to the Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development. I would like to seize this occasion to urge all Member States and generous donors to contribute more to the Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development. The Implementation of these resolutions and addressing the above-mentioned issues will be among the major priorities of the OIC General Secretariat for the coming years. Achieving these goals is not solely a test of our ability to deliver on our promises; it is above all a test of our moral convictions. In this regard, I will make every effort to explore endeavour to pursue this exalting assignment for the benefit of all OIC Member States and Muslim communities around the globe. Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish to take this opportunity to commend the COMCEC for its remarkable achievements. Achieving higher levels of development and prosperity of the Member States, as well as fostering economic and trade relations among them, remain the main pillars of the OIC economic agenda. Pursuant to this endeavor, the OIC Member States made serious efforts to develop the necessary institutional and multilateral legal framework within which the Member States could cooperate extensively by initiating, developing and implementing joint economic actions. As a result of such efforts, the share of OIC in the world trade has increased, and reached the level of 9.5% in 2006 - with 10.5% for the world exports and 8.4% for the world imports. In addition, the intra-OIC trade in overall trade of the OIC Member States recorded positive results since the share rose from 14.5% in 2004 to 15.5% in 2005 and to 16.3% in 2006, i.e., an increase by 6.9% and 5.1% respectively. The OIC General Secretariat and concerned Institutions have significantly contributed to these successes and will undoubtedly be instrumental to reach the 20% target level of intra-OIC trade by 2015 as set by the OIC Ten-Year Program of Action. Over the past year, the COMCEC Coordination Office has outstandingly performed to steer the Trade Negotiations under the "Framework Agreement on Trade Preferential System" (TPS-OIC) and the "Protocol on the Preferential Tariff Scheme" (PRETAS). With ratification of PRETAS by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the number of ratifying countries reached three. Seven other ratifications are needed to have this protocol enter into force. To my satisfaction also, the Second Round of Trade Negotiations were successfully concluded with the adoption of the New Agreement on the "Rules of Origin" which was signed by seven Member States. I would further like to appeal to all Member States to do their utmost to have these instruments ratified as soon as possible to enable the Ummah enter a new era of sustainable commercial and economic development. I invite all participating delegations and concerned OIC Institutions to support the OIC General Secretariat and the COMCEC Coordination Office to enable the Protocol to enter into force by the targeted date of January 1st 2009. Multilateral institutional and legal framework needs to be further reinforced so as to create more brotherly and favorable environment for our businessmen in parallel to these increasing economic and trade relations amongst our nations, of which greatest share belongs to COMCEC. I believe in continuation of its unending efforts to foster these relations, COMCEC will also like to discuss the pros and cons of institutionalization of a mechanism for the settlement and resolving of disputes, likely to arise among parties to international trade exchanges and contracts, that is, the idea of creating an OIC dispute resolution system, an arbitration mechanism. Mr. Chairman, I also would like to draw your attention to another new crisis which has emerged and reached an alarming stage: the global food shortage. The rapidly escalating global food crisis threatens to hamper the OIC Member States’ efforts towards economic development, in particular in their fight against poverty. The low-income groups of population are the most affected by the crisis, as the share of food in their total expenditures is much higher than that of wealthier groups. Fourteen OIC Member States are among the world’s 37 countries in crisis, and are requiring external assistance in food supply. These countries need more support from other OIC Member States and the international community, to cope with the sharp global rise in food prices. In this regard, let me draw your attention to a fact. If we look at the OIC Member States, we will see that some of them are endowed with natural resources like vast land, ample water supply and favourable climatic conditions condusive to greater food production and we also have some others who are advanced in technology and have sufficient financial capability. Now if we join the efforts of these two groups of Member States, we ourselves would certainly be able to cope with this looming danger of food crisis. Therefore, I would like to urge upon the OIC Member States and COMCEC to address the issue in the line of joining efforts among the OIC family in order to avoid the larger economic and political implications of this growing crisis. Finally, in light of the above, I would like to take this opportunity to address yet another important matter for the benefit of the Ummah. It is related to the re-energizing of the COMCEC processes and our way of doing business. Indeed this matter requires our most urgent attention to place the Committee on higher grounds. This will require a change in paradigm by focusing on additional avenues, which could be instrumental to increase the effectiveness of the COMCEC. Particularly, we need to explore other opportunities to increase the OIC commercial and economic cooperation. In addition to legal instruments to enact trade preferential systems among the Member States, the COMCEC Coordination Office could also envisage trade facilitations measures, such as, capacity building, infrastructure, etc. to enable Member States, particularly, the LCDs to access larger international markets and benefit from greater trade, especially with the OIC Member States. I believe this matter will be on your agenda of the meeting and will receive greater attention from participating delegations. I would like to assure you that we will spare no efforts to support your activities for the benefit and prosperity of the Islamic Ummah. I wish you full success in your deliberations. Wassalamu Alaykum wa-Rahmatullah wa-Barakatuh

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