D-8 Secretary-General, H.E. Seyed Ali Mohammad MOUSAVI, recently attended the 2nd Conference of Labour Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which was held on 23-26 April 2013, in Baku, Azerbaijan, and gave a presentation on the D-8 Organization and several ideas on the issue of migrant workers and its remittances potential, for the developing world.

The OIC Labour Ministers Conference, principally aims at joining efforts on the way of developing sustainable platform aimed at creation of decent and safe work through reducing poverty, unemployment and raising social welfare in OIC member countries, serves as a platform for sharing progressive ideas and innovations and achieving common objectives which will contribute to a global cooperation in labour issues. 

In his statement, the Secretary-General elaborated on the issue of remittance from migrant workers. As widely known, remittances of migrant workers are one of an enormous source of potential capital for long term development of some of D-8 countries and reduce poverty. Its transferred amount among countries is about US$300 billion per year according to the figures of World Bank. This amount is considered affecting the economies more than FDI does in some regions. When D-8 member states are of concern, remittance inflow to Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Pakistan are constituting a larger percentage of other types of national incomes. In addition, remittance flow has an increasing trend for most of D-8 member states. These flows of human and financial capital have implications for the economies and societies of the sending and the receiving countries.  

Secretary-General emphasized his conviction that it is high time to formulate a program to capitalize on the enormous flows of remittances to developing countries for longer term economic development and increased food security.  “We need to devise new approaches to training migrant workers and their families to use more formal banking channels for the transmission of remittances, to thereby access banking services and capital, and to develop locally sustainable, employment-generating enterprises in the agribusiness sector,” he underlined in his speech.

About 57 Labour Ministers of OIC countries visited Baku for this conference.