Ankara: Turkey’s president on Wednesday said Islamic countries should take active measures to prevent the coronavirus pandemic from harming foreign trade.
“In order for our foreign commerce not to suffer major devastation, we must introduce measures that encourage and facilitate trade,” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told a virtual meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC).
“The steps we will take to boost trade among COMCEC member countries are important,” Erdoğan said.
He also urged member nations to mobilize resources to ease the impact of the pandemic. “We must mobilize our resources to reduce the economic effects of the pandemic and ensure the continuity of production and demand,” Erdoğan added. He urged COMCEC members to ramp up efforts for greater use of local currencies in trade. “We [Islamic countries] should step up efforts to ease currency pressure on our economies, including using local currencies for trade,” he said. Using local currencies with trade partners has been on Turkey’s agenda for some time and the country has long advocated more use of local currencies for international trade instead of the dollar or euro to alleviate foreign currency pressure. On previous occasions, Erdoğan had alarmed Islamic countries to resist global crises and pressures, pointing out that the importance of taking steps to remove the pressure of international exchange rates. –Agencies
