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Muslim Ummah can benefit enormously from trade and investment flows among
OIC countries for which there is considerable potential. This was stated by
Minister for Privatisation and Investment, Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh while
addressing as main speaker at the Jeddah Economic forum in the presence of
President Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Mr. Ahmed Muhammad Ali, says a
message received from Saudi Arabia here today.
Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh presented concrete, implementable proposals during his
keynote address and stressed to accelerate the economic cooperation among the
OIC countries. The proposals related to the following broad areas i.e.
enhancing coordination / implementation with greater participation of the
private sector, stock market cooperation and emphasis on select sectors, and
sharing of information again through private sector. These proposals would
provide for the basis of further detailed analysis and discussions at working
level of the various OIC institutions before their presentation and adoption
by the OIC, he said.
He proposed Economic Convergence Initiative, Islamic Direct Investment
Acceleration Scheme (IDIAS), Communication and Knowledge Sharing Initiative
stock market integration and Joint Investment Body of OIC member States. He
also proposed that as a preliminary list financial, services, energy,
agri-business and information and communications technology be the economic
clusters which OIC as a group show focus on within these clusters and
suggested to develop these ideas further.
Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh further stated that greater economic cooperation among
the OIC countries can enhance the welfare of the Muslim Ummah and was
feasible, although elaborate preparatory steps for opening of OIC country
economies to each other were required. Greater economic cooperation among
these countries requires much larger efforts than so far made. The OIC forum
have passed great resolutions for this cooperation but these are not supported
by the political will in implementation. Indeed complete harmony among Muslim
countries has been lacking despite some religious and cultural affinities. Off
course technical and administrative measures are also required but these are
minor constraints. Thus greater cooperation on smaller country groupings in
select sectors by more concrete implementation schema was an obvious way out,
he added.
He pointed out that presently the economic cooperation among these countries
remained relatively small despite the OIC efforts in the last thirty years.
Greater intra OIC cooperation had assumed further urgency because of the
recent regionalisation trends, which have fuelled competition and protection,
particularly against the OIC countries, he stated.
Dr. Hafeez Shaikh said that in all the OIC countries all the States monopolies
were still state monopolies while the world has moved on and they had managed
to inject private sector into the management of commercial groups, we need to
get the policy regimes right and we need to bring the private sector into the
picture.
The Minister said that OIC had the cultural and ideological cohesion to be a
strong economic network, but to achieve this OIC must close the Target -
Implementation Gap" but the Muslims were interacting with each other outside
their countries, becoming a source of knowledge and sharing of experiences and
generation of ideas. OIC as an economic group had about 1/6 of the world
population. It is rich in resources. Yet, in spite of this abundance of
resources, the group as a whole has not lived up with its potentials. OIC GDP
is only less than 5% of world GDP, which is not growing. In fact, the share of
Muslim countries in World GDP is going down. This GDP is unevenly distributed
across the group.
If you take away the six top countries then the rest of 51 countries combined
have less than 50% of overall GDP or less than 2.5% of world GDP. There is a
huge gap between the poorest Niger and the richest Qatar of 1 to 186 times and
unfortunately out of the 49 least developed countries, 22 are within this OIC
economic network. Our share in world trade is less than 8% and even this is an
achievement because historically it ranges to about 6.4% if you take an
average. If you turn to trade within OIC countries, the picture is even
bleaker. Of all the trade that we do with all the countries, our trade with
OIC is about 10 to 13%. It shows that the OIC as a network is not working and
needed to be made effective and result oriented, he added.
Dr. Hafeez gave an over view of Pakistan's economy and highlighted the
economic initiatives taken under the leadership of President General Pervez
Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and elucidated the silent features
of Pakistan's economic, trade, investment and privatisation policies.