The D-8, also known as Developing-8, is an organisation for development cooperation among Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey. Representatives and business leaders from the D-8 countries on Wednesday met at a summit in capital Dhaka, saying the member states with more than one billion people have enormous potentials for economic cooperation. They vowed to enhance more cooperation among them in order to overcome dwindling foreign currency reserves, severe energy crisis and supply chain disruptions.
Many important issues especially relating to alternative trade financing such as cross currency swap, barter and blockchain came up for discussion at the summit to address their foreign currency reserves vulnerabilities. All the member countries are experiencing the same situation like foreign currency reserve vulnerabilities, supply chain disruptions, inflation, energy and food security risks due to ongoing impact of the Covid-19 and Russia-Ukraine war.
We believe this summit will help harmonize
the intra-country trade and reinforce
economic cooperation among the member states
D-8 was established in Istanbul in 1997 to engage in economic cooperation and improve member states’ position in the global economy. The volume of intra-trade among the D-8 member states at the time of establishment was $14 billion, which has now reached $129 billion.
In the summit the participants have explored ways to boost energy security with members such as Iran and Nigeria among the world’s top oil producers. So, it is expected that that the intra trade among the D-8 member states would increase by 10 times within the next 10 years. As the intra-trade is growing among the D-8 countries, they are also framing strategies that how and in what way the barriers can be removed to help boost trade among the member states. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina addressing the summit urged members countries to work together to harness their potential to become a powerful economic block.
She also placed a five-point proposal that included implementing preferential trade agreement (PTA) among the member states to maximise use of business prospects and opportunities to double the intra-D-8 trade from 129 billion dollars in the next decade. Therefore, let us work together to provide the impetus for harnessing our potentials towards a prosperous future.
The D-8, established twenty-five years ago, is now poised to deliver its goal of economic development through creating synergies. Bangladesh has the scope to increase cooperation with other D-8 member countries for tourism development as some of member states have already made success in their travel and leisure sectors. The member countries have over 200 million young people alongside a lot of women entrepreneurs that are coming up. Therefore, they should tap into its young workforce right now to improve their position in the global economy, diversify and create new opportunities in trade relations, enhance participation in decision-making at an international level, and improve standards of living. We believe this summit will help harmonize the intra-country trade and reinforce economic cooperation among the member states.