FPCCI to discuss trade enhancement

KARACHI: The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) President Rauf Alam will discuss measures to boost trade among Muslim countries at the Executive Committee and General Assembly meeting of the Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) to be held this month, a statement said on Friday.

Alam has said in the statement that the Islamic chamber would discuss intra-OIC trade, enhancing productivity and competitiveness, diversification and value addition, free export processing zones, promotion of inter-OIC investment in public and private sectors, and enhancing the share of intra-OIC trade to 25 percent in the global trade.   

He said the global share of trade among the Muslim countries was currently 19 percent. Alam said the share was 15 percent in 2005 which indicates a slight improvement of four percent in a decade.

The FPCCI president said mutual trade volume between EU member countries was 64 percent of global trade, NAFTA share 49 percent, and ASEAN share stood at 25 percent of the global trade.

He indicated that trade between Muslim countries was much lower despite it being the largest block of the world in terms of number of countries.  

While discussing trade relations among the Muslim countries, he referred the report of ICDT and said that according to this report, the main obstacles to the development of intra-OIC exports were the cost of developing new market, foreign exchange risks, the cost or supply of labour, regulation of foreign government, the collection of information on member states markets getting licenses or bonds, and local partners.

Alam further said the share of trade of Muslim countries with EU countries was 20 percent and with China it stood at 13 percent.

He said that UAE, Turkey, Saudi Arab, Indonesia, and Malaysia cover more than 50 percent of intra-OIC trade out of 57 member countries of the OIC. More than 90 percent of non-oil and non-gas trade belongs to D-8 countries with the Muslim world.

Alam, who also holds the Presidency of ECO-CCI and Chairmanship of D-8 CCI, said that Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE, and Egypt were included in those countries which face the largest number of trade obstacles from their partner countries.