Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Monday urged the D-8 member states to promote intra-trade and investment innovation, leveraging the commonalities.
“We need common investment policies, guidelines, and strategies including diaspora investment opportunities; and work for minimizing tariff and non-tariff barriers,” he said, speaking virtually at the ‘D-8 Business Forum’, ahead of the April 8 summit.
“We also need to create funds for development, R&D, technology transfer, capacity building and support for institutions and centres of excellence, including the SME and blue economy sectors,” he said, stressing on the area of innovation and mainstreaming them in our developmental strategy circuit.
The foreign minister said the business forum is an important event when the Chairmanship of the D-8 Chamber of Commerce and Industries (D-8 CCI) is being handed over to the Federation of Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FBCCI) from the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB).
D-8, also known as Developing-8, is an organisation for development cooperation among the member states. The establishment of D-8 was announced officially through the Istanbul Declaration of Summit of Heads of State/Government on June 15, 1997.
Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey are the members of the grouping.
The total GDP of the D-8 Member States is around 4.9% of world GDP and the total population is around 15.3% of world population.
This is manifestation of the region’s consumer base for both service and commodities along with its inherent growth potentials.
“To tap into that, I believe D-8 CCI could play the key role through effective collaboration and partnership with their government sector in addition to their own networking mechanism,” the foreign minister said.
Following the legacy of Bangladesh’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the foreign minister said: “his able daughter and our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has also put her policy priorities of achieving economic advancement without leaving anyone left.”
“Inclusive development is at the forefront of our national plan. With implementing this strategy, Bangladesh moved out from the World Bank-defined list of low-income countries (LIC) to Lower Middle-Income Country (LMIC) in 2015. Now it is graduating from the UN list of Least Developed Countries (LDC). This is a remarkable achievement for Bangladesh at a film where we are observing our 50th Golden Jubilee of independence and 100th anniversary of our Father of Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. This has been possible for pro-people and pro-business socio-economic policies of the Sheikh Hasina Government. Bangladesh is now a vibrant economy, a land of opportunity,” he said.
