Tehran declaration

The fourth summit of the D-8 member-countries held in Tehran on Wednesday, February 18, issued a 34-point declaration at its conclusion which inter alia reaffirmed the aims of greater and closer trade and economic co-operation between the member states and suggested steps for the achievement of this objective.
Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali in his address at the conference unfolded a six-point framework to enhance co-operation within the organisation.
These included reduction and elimination of tariffs, harmonisation of standards and simplification of custom procedures, re-strengthening of transportation and communication systems, provision of affordable health care, expansion of co-operation in areas of information technology and higher learning, and above all strengthening of the D-8 Co-ordinating Unit based in Istanbul.
The Tehran declaration included most of the steps pinpointed by Prime Minister Jamali and in this respect a High Level Group (HLG) of officials was proposed to be constituted.
This group would be entrusted with the task of drafting recommendations for concrete measures to implement the aims of expanding member states trade relations.
The objective is to be realised through progressive steps such as preferential tariff structure and ultimately transformation of the co-operation in multilateral trade between these states into a free trade area.
The efforts in this direction would also include harmonisation of standards and customs procedures with a view to facilitating easier flow of trade among the member countries.
The Prime Minister in his speech offered to host the meeting of the High Level Group in Pakistan in September next with a view to speeding up the process of implementation of the aims and mentioned in the declaration.
The Prime Minister was right in his observations that foreign trade provides a major source of financing development efforts in each country, specially in the developing countries.
Therefore he stressed the need for a greater mutual flows of goods and services between the member-states.
This in turn would promote a greater measure of inter-dependence between the member-countries on the basis of which, he felt, development of resources through industrialisation and expansion of financial sector would be achieved with expansion in mutual trade.
The 34-point declaration was marked by a prominent reference to apprehensions of the developing countries in general over the discriminatory impact of the WTO rules and provisions they have suffered over the last few years.
In this context it was decided that a common stand should be planned by D-8 countries to resist pressures from the developed countries to get their policies such as in respect of farm subsidies, okayed at the next WTO negotiations.
Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali also expressed similar views and stressed the need for non-discriminatory progress in the globalisation of international trade within the framework of the WTO.
In this context the declaration emphasised that the representatives of the D-8 states should closely co-operate with each other in international forums with a view to projecting a common standpoint in the WTO negotiations and other international meetings.
This is undoubtedly a right approach to achieve the common objective of ridding the WTO of discriminatory interpretation of the rules against the developing countries.
The organisation of the D-8 is exceptional for the distant location of its member countries in different regions such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, South East Asia and Europe (Turkey) unlike the regional trade and economic co-operation organisations in different parts of the globe.
The objective of bringing about a cohesion in trade and economic policies and to foster expansion in bilateral trade between the member-states is indeed a unique basis for the establishment of this organisation which was initiated back in 1997 by the then Prime Minister Najamuddin Arbakan of Turkey.
A satisfactory achievement of the organisation, however, is that over the last seven years 50 percent increase has been recorded in the trade volume between the member-states.
As is quite apparent, the member-states are all the Muslim countries with largest population among the OIC nations.
Of these Pakistan, Turkey and Iran are also the founder members of Economic Co-operation Organisation (ECO) which was established in 1984 as a successor to the RCD founded in 1964.
While the aims of these organisations are quite lofty ones, the achievements so far made lack much to be desired.