Top officials' preparatory meet ends

The two-day summit is to be attended by the heads of state or senior delegations from the eight developing member countries: Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey and host Indonesia

Foreign Minister M Morshed Khan will lead the Bangladesh delegation at the summit as Prime Minister Khaleda Zia dropped her plan to attend the meet at the last moment. She also didn't attend the last D-8 summit held in Tehran in January 2004.

Talking to The Daily Star, a member of Bangladesh delegation said the summit is expected to focus on ways to boost trade, build cooperation in finance, poverty alleviation, debt reduction and development of alternative energy sources.

The summit would also review the results of decisions made at the last summit, approve projects planned for the next two years and identify new areas of cooperation, official sources said.

It will also discuss and decide on the proposal to strengthen the D-8 Secretariat.

Three documents will be signed during the summit, namely the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA), the Multilateral Agreement on Administrative Assistance in Custom Matters and the Bali Declaration.

The ministers for commerce and trade of D-8 countries will sign the D-8 PTA on behalf of their governments for promoting trade among the populous eight Islamic countries.

The draft of the D-8 PTA was finalised at Islamabad during the second meet of the D-8 high-level expert group on trade and trade-related matters a few months ago.

Following the finalisation of the draft, the eight countries have settled the tariff reduction modalities and lists of items to be traded among the signatory countries.

After the formal signing of this agreement at the upcoming summit, the enforcement date for the D-8 PTA would also be announced, officials added.

The draft of PTA is primarily designed to serve as a framework for further negotiations, which are to be subsequently undertaken for expansion of the scope of PTA.

In the initial phase the member countries would lower their tariffs at a certain percentage on a number of import items according to their choice, for example 10-20 percent of their harmonised system tariff lines. At subsequent stages, the number of import items, which will be subject to tariff reduction, and the amount of reductions may be increased in a progressive manner.

On the sidelines of the summit, the D-8 Trade Fair began on Tuesday and will continue till Saturday and the D-8 Business Forum will start today.

The D-8 was established in Istanbul, Turkey in 1997.