D-8 Secretary-General, Dr. Seyed Ali Mohammad Mousavi, participated in a TV program titled “BilaKuyud” on TRT etTurkiyye, on 17 November 2013 in Istanbul and he answered a set of questions in this live program. 

In answering a question regarding the activities and achievements of D-8 during the last sixteen years, he explained the major activities of the Organization by valuating the performance since its inception 16 years ago. “I believe D-8 has achieved remarkable progress, and the statistics regarding the level of cooperation in various sectors supports this largely positive assessment. Just to cite an example, the substantial increase in intra-D-8 trade can indeed be attributed to the Group’s success. The creation and implementation of the Visa Agreement, Customs Agreement and Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) have served to facilitate, regulate and promote actual cooperation among the Member Countries” Dr. Mousavi stated. 

He also mentioned that among these legal instruments, the PTA, which came into force almost a year ago, should be taken as a model. Its full implementation will epitomize the real success of the group. Intra-D8 trade volume accounted to 150 Billion US in 2012, should be increased to 500 Billion USD by 2018 which is among the targets stipulated in the Roadmap, he added.

Upon a question on whether he thinks that D-8 will reach this target, Dr. Mousavi said “It is a very challenging target but I believe with strengthening economic and trade relations among D-8 private sector, creating new and additional mechanisms and also with above mentioned agreements we can reach this target. In this regard, private sector is the essential element in assuring the effectiveness of the work of the D-8 Economic Cooperation and we need a very active involvement of the private sector of D-8 Member Countries. 

A question was asked concerning other activities and cooperation areas of D-8, where Secretary-General Mousavi explained, “According to D-8 Charter, we have more than twenty cooperation areas. But on 12th D-8 Session of Council of Ministers, in 2009 in Malaysia, the Council agreed on 5 priority areas;  Trade, Agriculture and Food Security, Industrial Cooperation and SMEs, Transportation, Energy and Minerals among the other areas of cooperation as stated in the Roadmap. These five priority areas of cooperation were decided due to their direct contribution on the enhancement of intra-D8 trade for promoting development”. 

Secretary-General continued: “D-8 Trade, Agriculture and Food Security, Industrial Cooperation and SMEs have been showing impressive progress and development. To date, Agricultural and Industrial cooperation had successfully held three Ministerial Meetings (2009, 2011, and 2012). Although trade cooperation had just one Ministerial Meeting (2013), the main vehicle of this area, the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA), has entered into force between Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey since 25 August 2011. In addition, Custom and Visa Agreements has entered into force between the Member Countries”. 

However, the cooperation on energy and transportation has not yet been satisfactory. For instance, in transportation sector, only civil aviation has developed so far and there was no concrete progress on the other sectors like road, railroad, logistics and shipping cooperation up to this date. After my discussion with Turkish Ministers on this issue, Turkey agreed to hold the first Ministerial level meeting on both areas in 2014. We have also initiated several possible new areas of cooperation that might bring positive effect to D-8, such as Tourism and University cooperation. These areas could be taken as independent area of cooperation or under established ones, for instance academia under Science, Technology & Innovation ” Dr. Mousavi declared.