President of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines, and Agriculture (ICCIMA) Gholam Hossein Shafei said on Sunday that the member states of the Economic Cooperation Organization has to combine efforts to turn the organization into a strong economic bloc.
Shafei made the remarks while addressing the 4th ECO Business Forum which is being held on the sideline of 15th ECO Summit in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
Heads of chambers and other representatives from Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Turkey as well as delegations from ECO Trade and Development Bank and the organization’s secretariat in Tehran were present at the forum.
Shafei called for implementing a 2003 preferential trade agreement between ECO member states to turn the document into a free trade and joint investment agreement in new areas of cooperation.
Referring to the organization’s $661 billion trade with the world in 2020, he said that the figure shows a 3.9% decrease compared to that of 2019.
Shafei said that ECO has been able to attract only 1.7% of the world’s total direct investment which he believed was not significant with regard to the potentials, wide area and population of the member countries.
He underlined the need for further cooperation on tourism, health tourism in particular, and transit by making use of both railway and road corridors.
Iran Chamber chief also urged the significance of cooperation on energy, oil, gas and petrochemical sectors.