D-8 Organization has just successfully held the 11th Meeting of High Level Trade Officials (HLTO) on October 9-10, 2010 in Istanbul with the sound resolution on facilitating the implementation of PTA. The Meeting was attended by full participants from related authorities of all member countries, and were fruitful in making various productive results to the utmost goal of increasing trade volume among member countries.

the D-8 11th HLTO Meeting is an important step for finalization of discussions regarding exchanging Offer Lists and this achievement will also encourage Member Countries to accelerate the ratification process. As known, Malaysia, Iran and Nigeria have ratified the PTA, and as soon as one additional Member Country ratifies the PTA, it will enter into force.

The D-8 countries comprise some 961 million people, or around 15% of the world’s population, with a dynamic labor force; have rich mineral, energy and agricultural resources, promising tourism capacities and competitive operational costs. Half of the members are cited in top 25 merchandise exporters of the World. Two of them are members of the G-20. All the D-8 countries are important players in their respective regions. Around 45 % of the total exports of the 57 membered OIC are realized by the 8 countries of the organization. D8 countries, when calculated together, compromise the 55 % of the total GDP of the OIC countries.

In addition to that, according to the latest available statistics, D-8 countries’ total trade volume has reached 1.15 trillion USD by the year 2009, D-8’s intra trade volume is 67 billion USD, which is 5.7% of D-8 total trade volume and which is far behind D-8 potential.  The entry into force of PTA will be a key step for further development of D-8 intra-trade by means of both quantity and diversity.

The 2-days meeting was concluded on October 10th, 2010 with the adoption of Report of the Meeting. Member Countries authorities can download all the documents related to this meeting from the Document and

Resources and Official Documents then D-8 meeting Documents from this website.