KL wants OIC members to boost investment

KL wants OIC members to boost investment

Shanthy Nambiar and Yoolim Lee, Bloomberg/Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Islamic
countries should boost investments in telecommunications,
transport and public utilities to spur economic growth and trade.

Infrastructure facilities "constitute the backbone of
development, and these need to be transformed to enhance
efficiency and to support businesses," Abdullah told about 600
government officials, bankers and investors on Monday at the
first World Islamic Economic Forum in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.
Islamic countries are already investing "billions of dollars" in
infrastructure, he said.

The suggestion from Abdullah came as the 57-member
Organization of the Islamic Conference seeks ways to arrest the
decline in their share of global exports and lagged trade with
countries outside the world's largest Muslim grouping. Ten of the
11-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are OIC
countries. OIC members include Pakistan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia,
Egypt and Indonesia.

There are an estimated 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide and the
number is forecast to increase 2.9 percent a year, Abdullah said.
The gross domestic product of Islamic countries is less than 5
percent of the global economy and trade among these nations
account for about 6 percent to 7 percent, or $800 billion, of
total trade, he said.

Abdullah said Muslims in India, China and Russia, who are not
member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference,
also represent key markets for growth.

India, where an estimated 138 million of its 1.02 billion
people are Muslims, posted economic expansion of 8.1 percent in
the three months ended June 30, the fastest pace in more than a
year as companies increased production to feed a consumer boom,
the Central Statistical Organization said Sept. 30. India is
Asia's fourth-largest economy.

China's economy expanded 9.5 percent from a year earlier in
the first half to 6.74 trillion yuan ($833 billion), according to
the statistics bureau. The country, Asia's second-largest
economy, is the world's No. 1 consumer of steel, copper and coal.

"Should we combine these figures with the Muslim population in
the OIC nations, it will provide us with an immensely huge
Islamic consumer market," Abdullah said.

Islamic nations have attracted only a "small share" of global
foreign direct investment, and most of these have gone to middle-
income and oil exporting countries, Abdullah said. Muslim
majority countries such as Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Saudi
Arabia and Qatar are also members of OPEC. Saudi Arabia is the
world's largest oil producer.

"While many Muslim countries are blessed with rich natural
resources, predominantly oil and gas, the long-term challenge is
to sustain economic growth by reducing over-reliance on these
resources," Abdullah said.