How Does Islamıc Center For Development Of Trade Operate?

Dear Readers,

As for our Morocco Panorama series, I would like to talk about the Islamic Center for Development of Trade (ICDT), which was established in Casablanca in 1984 in partner- ship with the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) with the mission of promoting Trade & Investments in OIC Countries.

To give further details on the subject, I want to start with the objectives of the Organisation:

• Encouraging regular trade exchanges among the OIC countries,

• Promoting investments likely to develop trade flows among the OIC countries,

• Contributing to the promotion of Member States’ products & services and encourage their access to foreign markets,

• Disseminating trade information,

• Assisting the member states in the field of trade promo- tion and international negotiations,

• Extending assistance to OIC enterprises and economic operators.

6 MAIN ACTIVITY AREAS DETERMINED TO REACH THE GOALS

ICDT has established six main areas of activities to reach these objectives. Both the activities and the organisational structure of the centre are based on these areas, which are trade promotion, trade information, investment promotion, training, international trade negotiations, and studies & research.

Apart from them, ICDT is also responsible for the coordi- nation of the implementation of the New OIC Ten Year Plan of Action (OIC-2025). And there are some highlights from ICDT’s progress report on the implementation of the plan of action OIC-2025. Let us take a quick look at them:

• OIC Member States accounted for 10.5% of world trade with an aggregated amount of $2 trillion in 2019. The main players in the 2019 trade were the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Turkey, Indonesia, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, Nigeria, and Lebanon. These 10 countries recorded 51% of the total trade of OIC countries in 2018.

• The joint efforts of the programs of the OIC institutions and partnerships with other regional and international organisations contributed to increasing the share of in- tra-OIC trade in the total trade of the Member States from 18.69% in 2016 to 21.02% in 2018.

OIC TRADE MAP WAS DEVELOPED

Within the framework of ICDT’s collaboration with the International Trade Center (ITC-Geneva), OIC Trade Map was launched in December 2016 for the 57 OIC Member Countries. The OIC Trade Map provides trade flow infor- mation in a user-friendly and easily accessible format. TINIC’s (Trade Information Network for Islamic Countries) users can access this huge trade database containing indicators on national export performance, international demand, alternative markets, and the role of competitors from both the product and country perspectives for OIC countries. Also, tariff information at the 6-digit level allows exporters to get a quick overview of the average level of protection applied to a group of products in order to quickly screen and rank markets.

Head of International Relations at TKBB Fatma Çınar