Foreign Minister Dr. AK Abdel Momen called for joint investment policies, guidelines and strategies to promote intra-trade and investment innovation among the D-8 member states.

He said while virtually addressing the D-8 business forum held April 5 on the side line of the upcoming D-8 summit. “Leveraging the commonalities, D-8 Member States should aim at promoting intra-trade and investment innovation,”

The foreign minister said the D-8 need to create diaspora investment opportunities and work for minimizing tariff and non-tariff barriers expediting trade among the member states.
Momen said the D-8 also need to create funds for development, R&D,technology transfer, capacity building and support for institutions and centers of excellence, including the SME and blue economy sectors,” he said.
“We would like to particularly stress on the area of innovation and mainstreaming them in our developmental strategy circuit,” he said.

Noting that the total GDP of the D-8 Member States is around 4.9% of world GDP, the foreign minister said this is manifestation of the region’s consumer base for both service and commodities along with its inherent growth potentials.

To tap into that, he said, D-8 CCI could play the key role through effective collaboration and partnership with their government sector in addition to their self-networking mechanism.

During the event the Chairmanship of the D-8 Chamber of Commerce and Industries (D-8 CCI) was handed over to the Federation of Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FBCCI) from the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB).

TOBB president Rifat Hisarciklioglu handed over the D-8 Chairmanship to FBCCI president Sheikh Fazle Fahim. D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, also known as developing-8 consists of 8 developing Muslims countries- Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey.

Bangladesh will chair the D-8 for next two years that creates opportunity to project Bangladesh’s tremendous economic and development success in front of the world,” foreign minister Dr AK Abdul Momen told reporters at a virtual media briefing today.

At the summit, Turkey, the current chair of D-8 will hand over the chairmanship to Bangladesh for the next two years.

At the end of the summit, the “D-8 Decennial Roadmap 2020-2030” and “Dhaka Declaration 2021” are likely to be adopted to make the D8 platform more effective and functional for realizing full potential of economic cooperation among its member states, Momen said earlier.