Isiaka Abdulqadir Imam, Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation, D-8, who is visiting Tehran, said he will do his best to activate a common visa program among member states.
He made the remarks during a visit to Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines, and Agriculture (ICCIMA) where he met with ICCIMA President Gholam Hossein Shafei.
The visit to Iran is being made a week after a D-8 meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.
Speaking during the meeting, the Iran Chamber of Commerce president complained that the D-8 member countries have failed to make use of significant potentials for cooperation.
Shafei said that the Iran Chamber of Commerce is ready to cooperate with the private sectors of other D-8 member states.
Hossein Salimi, the chairman of Iran-Afghanistan Joint Chamber of Commerce who represented Iran in the last week D-8 meeting in Istanbul, also spoke in the meeting and regretted that the exchanges of commodities among D-8 member countries are much less than those of other countries.
Noting that he also have been cooperating with the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) for long years, Salimi referred to further exchanges among ECO member countries and said that the obstacles on the way of more interaction within D-8 have to be investigated.
He said that except for Turkey, no other D-8 member country has made significant investment in Iran while Iran’s gas resources are the biggest in the world and the country holds the second-largest oil resources globally.
Salimi believed that the activation of the private sectors of the member countries can boost to the volume of exchanges by 50%.
The D-8 secretary general, for his part, regretted about the insignificant trade exchanges among member countries and said that a $109 billion of exchanges for a 25-year-old organization with 1.1 billion population is disgraceful.
Abdulqadir Imam said that he aims to create further connections and cooperation among the chambers of commerce of D-8 member states.
He also proposed his plan for holding an annual joint trade exhibition of the member countries which he believed can become operational as of next year.
The D-8 secretary general also said that his other strategy is to establish a preferential trade scheme within the organization.
He also expressed hope for activating a common visa agreement among the D-8 member countries.
Abdulqadir Imam said that there already exists such an agreement but it needs to become operational.
It is not acceptable that the economic activists be held in a long process for receiving visa, he said.