D-8 Secretary-General, Seyed Ali Mohammad Mousavi had a meeting with Turkey’s Economy Minister, Nihat Zeybekci, on 3 February 2014 in Ankara-Turkey. SG Mousavi congratulated Zeybekci on his recent designation as the Minister and thanked him for Turkey’s support, saying Turkey is the ‘father’ of this organization and will hold the 9th Summit in 2014. “In the upcoming Summit, the vital role of the Chair will be rotated again to Turkey. This second phase of its life-cycle will be a turning point for D-8 to move in a manner commensurate with the requirements of developments” he said. 

“Since D-8 is an economic organization, trade is backbone of our cooperation and the total trade of D-8 countries at the end of 2012 was $1.8 trillion and it covered the 5.0% of total world trade in 2012, which was around $36 trillion. Increased trade numbers would accord the countries having such potential. Hence according to the Roadmap approved by the State’s Presidents in 2008, it has been aimed to increase this number to $500 billion until 2018,” he said. Highlighting the fact that $500 billion is a huge amount and a big challenge, but if we look at the potential of the every Member Countries of the D-8, I know that we can do it and also thanks to private sector’s potential as well as the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA), visa and customs agreements, which are already entered into force. Implementation of these agreements would serve positively to reach that aim,” he finally added. 

Minister Zeybekci stressed on the issue that Turkey is eager to cooperate and support the D-8 countries. “We immediately want to implement the D-8 Preferential Trade Agreements (PTA) to reach the aim to increase the intra-trade volume among D-8 countries to reach $500 billion until 2018” Zeybekci said. He also underlined that Turkey’s total trade volume with D-8 countries has increased to US$15 billion from US$2.9 billion between 1997 and 2013. He finally expressed that Turkey is going to host the D-8 PTA Supervisory Committee meeting at the end of March and D-8 Trade Minister Council Meeting at the end of June 2014