October 25, 2006	Wednesday	Shawwal 1, 1427

RIYADH, Oct 24: The Organisation of the Islamic Conference has adopted a five-year action plan to enhance the share of cotton producing Islamic countries in the global cotton trade.

A local press reported here that the action plan was adopted in a meeting of officials from the member states held earlier this month in Istanbul.

The action plan for the OIC cotton producing countries' cooperation development strategy (2007-2011) aims at reducing poverty through the development of cotton sectors in the OIC member states. Implementation tools, timeframes and expected outputs/impacts were also identified in the meeting.

The OIC general secretariat, the Islamic Development Bank and the advisory board will initiate and supervise preparation of concrete projects to be reviewed. They will coordinate efforts to ensure the financing and effective and speedy implementation of the action plan as well as organising trade fairs with the participation of cotton producers, traders and businessmen active in the textile industry.

Three centres of excellence, one each in Africa, the Arab world and Asia are to be established. These centres would coordinate harmonising and strengthening research for the development of the cotton sector in the OIC member countries. A mid-term review of the situation and the impact of the action plan would be undertaken in 2009.

More than 16 million people are involved in cotton production in the OIC region. However, despite being the second-largest exporter of cotton after the United States, almost 15 per cent of the international market, productivity is low in the region The industry in most of these countries faces development challenges in terms of production, marketing, financing and international competition.

Being an important product of the member states, the OIC is endeavouring to prepare the industry in that region to cope with the emerging challenges and is seeking the participation of some other major OIC countries such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, which also have a thriving and significant cotton industry.

Cotton is a major export in a significant number of OIC member countries, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad and Togo. In those countries, cotton accounts for between five and 10pc of gross domestic product and exports of cotton account for over one-third of all exports and over 60pc of income from agricultural exports.

According to 2005-06 data, 20 OIC cotton-producing countries have a share of 28 per cent of the total global cotton production, 24 per cent of world total cotton consumption, 36 per cent of world cotton export and 27 per cent of world cotton imports.

Yet, despite these competitive advantages, the cotton industry in many OIC states is still characterised by several production, processing, institutional and structural weaknesses that jeopardise its viability in an era of increasing globalisation and competition in the world cotton industry.

Further the decline in use of cotton fibres over time in favour of synthetic chemical fibres and the pressure of high competition at the international level have also resulted in considerable loss of export revenues to some of the cotton exporting countries.

Consequently some of the OIC member countries, particularly the small-scale producers, are losing the world market share, resulting in reduced income and rising poverty. On the other hand, some OIC cotton-producing countries, such as Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt, have accumulated a vast experience in producing efficient, high-quality cotton.

Given the state of affairs and considering the important role and strategic place cotton occupies in the economies of many OIC member states, the OIC felt there was an urgent need to seek ways and means to stimulate cooperation among the OIC countries in the cotton sector.

The development of cotton sector within the OIC required medium and long-term strategies to create conditions for boosting the existing industrial capacities, promoting foreign direct investment and developing industrial, financial, commercial and technical partnerships among the OIC member countries.This is also important for exchanging expertise in the areas of cotton processing and training in production that would enable these countries to develop value-added post-production of cotton into textiles.