The Secretary General of Developing Eight Organization for Economic Cooperation (D-8), H.E. Ambassador Isiaka Abdulqadir Imam, held a bilateral meeting with the Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy of the Republic of Indonesia, H.E. Mr. Sandiaga Salahuddin Uno, on the sidelines of the 3rd World Conference on Creative Economy (WCCE) in Bali, Indonesia, which took place from 5-7 October 2022.

During the meeting, Ambassador Imam highlighted the need for member states to focus more attention on the tourism industry’s development to maximize its potential for stronger cooperation. He also underlined the significant contributions of the private sector and, most importantly the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs), in tourism and creative economy, to the GDP of the D-8 Member States.

The Secretary General further informed Minister Sandiaga Uno that the D-8 Organization will organize a Ministerial Meeting on Tourism, to be hosted by Pakistan, in the near future. All Ministers responsible for tourism from the D-8 Member States are expected to attend. Speaking further, Ambassador Imam proposed to Minister Sandiaga Uno for Indonesia, as a founding member of the D-8 Group, to host a “D-8 Tourism Forum” as part of the Organization’s effort to strengthen tourism sector and also considering the tremendous feat achieved by the Indonesian Government in the tourism industry.

He stated that the proposed initiative, which would be largely private sector driven, would serve as an avenue to galvanize synergy among tourism industries sectors, particularly airlines, tour operators, travel agents, and other hospitality industries. He underlined that tourism is one of the priority sectors for the D-8 Organization.

Minister Sandiaga Uno welcomed the proposal and assured Indonesia’s support for all initiatives geared towards strengthening the tourism industry in the D-8 Organization. He also urged the D-8 Member States to step up their collaborations in the other areas of the creative economy such as advertising, arts and crafts, fashion design, film, video, performing arts, music, photography, publishing, software development, and computer Games. He further expressed confidence that by maximizing the Organization’s platform, Member States could materialize more opportunities.

Ambassador Imam also informed the Minister that the D-8 Organization was planning to establish the D-8 Creative Economy and Financial Center in collaboration with a Malaysian company, the Al-Hidayah Group. The Center would be established under the public-private partnership and will be based in Malaysia. One of the main features of the Center is that it will operate in line with the Islamic principles of equity and fairness in the accumulation of capital.

Ambassador Imam further expressed his confidence that, when fully operational, the Center would facilitate the process of harnessing the D-8 Member States’ potential in the creative economy to better implement “D-8 2030 Decennial Road Map”.

In his response, Minister Sandiaga Uno welcomed the initiative and expressed the readiness of the Government of Indonesia to look further into the matter, for a possible contribution.

Secretary General, who participated in this year’s conference upon the invitation from the Indonesian Government, congratulated the Minister for the excellent arrangements for the Conference and for the adoption of the “Bali Creative Economy Roadmap for 2022”, as its outcome document.