Proceedings of the 13 th Meeting of the
COMCEC Agriculture Working Group
17
4. Policy Debate Session on the Agricultural Agri-food Trade
Structures in the OIC Member Countries
The session was moderated by Mr. MD. ABUBAKAR SIDDIQUE, Joint Secretary, Ministry of
Agriculture of Bangladesh. At the beginning of the session, Mr. Selçuk KOÇ, Director at the CCO,
made a short presentation on the responses of the Member Countries to the policy questions on the
agricultural trade policies in the OIC Member Countries that were already sent by the CCO.
Afterwards, the policy recommendations provided in the room document were presented.
Later on, the participants expressed their views and comments on each policy recommendations.
Following discussions, the participants have agreed on the following policy recommendations:
 Promotion of Niche Agricultural Products and Halal Certification through product
diversification, trademarking, marketing strategies and advertising campaigns.
 Promotion of Commercial Cooperation (e.g. enhancing agricultural investments, removal
of business visas, etc) and Non-Commercial Cooperation (e.g. sharing best practices and
technical expertise, developing safety standards, etc.) among the OIC Member Countries in
the areas related to agricultural trade.
 Promotion of Tariff Reductions and Bilateral Arrangements in key products (e.g. sugar,
meat, feeding stuff for animals, oil-seeds, live animals).
 Developing and implementing multilateral trade arrangements (e.g. TPS-OIC - Trade
Preferential System among the Member States of the OIC)) with a view to contributing to
collaborative and sustainable agricultural trade development.
 Enhancing the capacity of the Member Countries in collection, management and
dissemination of agricultural trade data with a view to designing sound and evidence-based
agricultural trade policies.
The policy recommendations are attached to this report as Annex 4.