Proceedings of the 13 th Meeting of the
COMCEC Agriculture Working Group
20
6.3.Turkey
Mr. Aykut ORDUKAYA, Expert, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, made a presentation on
agricultural trade policies of Turkey.
At the outset, Mr. ORDUKAYA reflected trade related aspects of Turkey’s Agricultural Policy. Mr.
ORDUKAYA has noted that Turkey produces a wide range of agricultural products but is a leading
world producer and exporter of nuts, dried fruits, and some fresh vegetables.
Mr. ORDUKAYA has mentioned about trade costs, trade facilitation efforts for perishable goods of
OIC member countries including Turkey, SPS&TBT matters as the non-tariff barriers playing
important role in the intra-OIC agricultural trade; and also provided information regarding
Turkey’s PTAs and Agri-Business Forums already held in the OIC region. Finally, Mr. ORDUKAYA
has concluded with the possible contribution the digitalization could make to agricultural trade.
At the very end of his presentation, Mr. ORDUKAYA has presented a couple of policy
recommendations to promote agricultural trade in the OIC region. Mr. ORDUKAYA has noted that
as an international portal, ICPCEM (Islamic Countries Products Common Exchange Market) needs
to be further extended in order to become fully functional and operational Common Market
Organization through which up-to-date data on product prices, types and tariffs could be reached
in the OIC region.
6.4.Uganda
Mr. Victor Emmanuel KIMBOWA, Economist, Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries
of Uganda made a presentation on Uganda’s agricultural trade.
Mr. KIMBOWA started his presentation by giving general information about the agriculture sector
in Uganda. He stated that agriculture was prioritized as a key development sector of Uganda
economy. He underlined that 71.9% of Uganda population is employed by agriculture sector and
over 40% of the total Uganda exports is in agriculture sector.
Mr. KIMBOWA informed the participants that Uganda had a trade deficit in terms of trade with
world as well as trade with OIC member countries. He also informed the participants on the share
of blocks in total trade and added that the COMESA trading bloc remained the main destination for
Uganda’s formal exports with the share in total export earnings of 51.32% (US$ 1,483.72 million)
in 2017/18, followed by EU (19.86%) and Middle East (14.32%). He underlined that the export to
import ratio in the Financial Year 2017/18 was 52.66%. In terms of imports, China was leading
source of Uganda’s imports with 38.3% percent share. Among the OIC countries, Indonesia was the
top country with 175.15 million USD import.
Mr. KIMBOWA highlighted that production capacity, cost of trade, institutional efficiency and trade
policies were the key impediments to trade among the member countries. In the last part of his
presentation, Mr. KIMBOWA mentioned some policy options for sustainable intra-OIC agricultural
trade.