The Developing Eight Organization for Economic Cooperation and the International Trade Center (ITC) have expressed their cordial intent to facilitate close co-operation between the ITC and the D-8 with the objective of promoting and accelerating trade development, focusing its activities on poverty reduction in the States of Common Membership.

Dr. Seyed Ali Mohammad Mousavi, Secretary-General of D-8, met Ms. Arancha González , the ITC Executive Director on 22 June 2015 at the ITC Headquarters in Geneva. 

The two interlocutors agreed to work on development of collaborative partnership program in areas such as, trade, capacity-building, trade related technical assistance, simplification and harmonization of customs procedure, identifying priority areas for SMEs development etc. and the promotion of entrepreneurship. The ITC having institutional capacity for trade development and SMEs will assist in capacity building within the D-8 Organization. 

The D-8 Secretary-General updated the ITC Executive Director with the latest developments taking place within the Organization and added that cooperation in D-8 priority area of industrial cooperation is taking concrete shape. He hoped that in close cooperation with the ITC, the D-8 Organization would be able to accelerate its capacity in trade development. 

The ITC Executive Director warmly welcomed the D-8 Secretary-General to the ITC office in Geneva and informed him of the organization’s scope of work. Both concurred that the two Organizations had a lot of scope for joint effort in order to yield mutual benefit, sharing of information and analytical framework in particular. She appreciated the Secretary-General for the inputs and looked forward to working together in future. 

Both the interlocutors agreed to work closely to further inclusive development, build capacities of Member States, explore avenues for common projects in productive sectors, tap their potentials and explore options for effective implementation of instruments. 

The meeting was held in a very warm and congenial environment.