Secretary General, Mr Widi Pratikto, has recently visited the Director General of the Turkish Undersecretariat of the Prime Ministry for Foreign Trade, Mr Husnu Dilemre, earlier this week to exchange views and coordinate the preparation talks for the 11th D-8 HLTO Meeting which shall be soon held in Istanbul, October 9-10, 2010.

In the cordial meeting between two authorities, Mr Pratikto gave a brief summary of the previous HLTO meetings held by D-8 to his colleague. He said that D-8 deeply expected that through this discussion,

the PTA which has been signed by head of states in Bali, Indonesia, in May 2006 can be fully ratified. D-8 Secretary General believes that once the PTA is ratified, the intra-trade volume among D-8 countries will soar. It is expected that within 10 years of time, the total trade volume of D-8 shall increased from 750 billions US$ to nearly 1 trillion US$ — considering that the average growth of D-8 countries is above 5%. Thus, the intra-trade among D-8 can reach around 15-20%. This success will hopefully accelerate the growth of intra-trade among other member states of OIC (59 states), which in turn will be a propelling success to the increase of South-South trade, since the population of D-8 of more than 800 million peoples represent the majority of developing countries.

The fruitful meeting also further discussed about the procedures, agenda and substances of the HLTO meeting, in which D-8 Secretary General received a confirmation from Mr. Dilemre that he will give his utmost performance to chair the meeting next month. He said that it will be a privilege for him to contribute and assist fellow D-8 colleagues to reach a productive meeting.