D-8, world's $3.7 trillion powerhouse, marks 20 years

By Dilara Zengin and Bahattin Gonultas

ANKARA (AA) - As the Developing-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation marked its 20th anniversary on Thursday, the group’s head said he was looking forward to increasing influence in the coming years.

On June 15, 1997, the D-8 was launched after Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan proposed the creation of an economic group consisting of eight emerging economies from the Muslim world.

Alongside Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria and Pakistan created an organization based in Istanbul.

Today, it has a combined GDP of $3.7 trillion and includes more than 1 billion people -- around 15 percent of the world’s population.

Two of its members -- Turkey and Indonesia -- are among the group of the 20 biggest economies in the world.

“With its young and dynamic population, robust economic growth, strong trade relations and the will to cooperate in all strategic sectors… the D-8 is poised to carry its success to the future,” Secretary General Seyed Ali Mousavi told Anadolu Agency.

He added: “We are working on our priority areas, which are trade, transportation, agriculture, energy, tourism. We are quite good in some of these priority areas like trade and agriculture.”

Trade between the D-8 members currently stands at $120 billion, despite troubles such as conflict in the Middle East and sanctions against Iran posing considerable challenges to the group.

These problems limited the D-8’s activity. “We can say that for almost 10 years, the activity of the organization was only policy coordination,” Mousavi said.

However, the bloc has still achieved exports of more than $693 billion, or 4 percent of global trade, and an annual GDP growth rate of six percent.

The group last met in in Kuala Lumpur in 2008 and leaders are due to hold the next gathering in Istanbul, although a date is yet to be set.

Addressing the D-8’s future, Mousavi said he was “very much optimistic” about potential advances.

“Good will and the political will of our leaders are still there,” he said. “I am very much hopeful that when we meet at the ninth summit in Turkey, they could make very good progress.

“One of the areas that we really need for more cooperation is to establish a sort of financial mechanism to support our project.”