March 14, 2007	Wednesday	Safar 24, 1428

ISLAMABAD, March 13: The D-8 countries will finalise the rules of origin in the next couple of months for the implementation of the much-awaited preferential trade agreement (PTA) to increase the volume of regional trade, a senior official said on Tuesday.

The high-level trade officials of the bloc — Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Malaysia, Turkey, Iran and Indonesia -- are expected to meet on May 3-4 to give final touches to the rules of origin.

The draft PTA agreement had already been finalised by the member countries, suggesting 10-15 per cent reduction in customs duty on importable items within the bloc.

Addressing at the concluding session of the two-day workshop, organised by the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority (Smeda) on “data-collection, classification and management of SMEs”, director general, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mohammad Waheed-ul-Hassan, observed that the proceedings of the current D-8 workshop have paved way for future cooperation among member countries to achieve tangible economic gains through SME development process.

He said that the D-8 forum would soon result into the PTA, to be signed between the member countries. Once the rules of origin are set, PTA would start emerging, he said adding that a high-level meeting is expected to take place in May next.

A report, presented by the organisers, revealed that D-8 countries were covering 13 per cent of the world’s population. But, their share in the global trade was limited to four per cent only. However, the total trade of the D-8 member countries with rest of the world amounts to $400 billion.

Given these facts, there is a considerable scope for cooperation and opportunity to boost these figures by recognising the importance of SMEs and their contribution to economic growth, employment generation and poverty eradication.

Meanwhile, the workshop concluded with a consensus to develop a common data bank for helping SME development process in the member countries.

The delegates of the member countries unanimously suggested pooling the best practices being exercised in the D-8 countries for development of SME sectors.

They were of the opinion that all such information and data should be made available online for ready reference and utilisation of the member countries.

However, they stressed to hold a series of deliberations for standardisation, harmonisation and computability of the data across the countries on aboard at D-8.