Discussing Ways of Strengthening the Economic and Commercial Cooperation for the Countries of the Islamic Cooperation Organization
Saudi Arabia participated with a delegation headed by H.E. Dr. Tawfiq Bin Fawzan Al Rabiah - Minister of Commerce and Industry in the meetings of the thirtieth session of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation "COMCEC", which was held recently in Istanbul, Turkey from 3 - 6 Safar 1436 AH, corresponding to 25 - 28 November 2014 AD, where the attendants discussed a number of economic issues of interest to members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, with the participation of official delegations from various relevant government agencies.
A number of topics of mutual interest had been discussed as well, the most important of which are the Decimal Program of the organization, the action plan for the promotion of economic and commercial cooperation among the member countries, intraregional trade, the Convention on trade preferences, cooperation among the private sector organizations in the field of Islamic trade exhibitions, the financial cooperation, the program for food security, transportation, the development of tourism sector, increasing the productivity of the agricultural sector, the eradication of poverty and strengthening the role of the private sector in the economic cooperation.
It is worth mentioning that the Standing Committee for the Economic and Commercial Cooperation of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (COMCEC) was established during the Conference of the Third Islamic Summit, in Makkah 1981, where its works had actually begun, and where the president of the Republic of Turkey was chosen as its chairman at the Fourth Islamic Summit in 1984, the said Organization includes 57 members, in addition to five countries as observers, representing four continents.