OIC nations need to liberalize economies and take adequate measures to provide enabling environment for doing business in their respective countries, which will help attracting more Foreign Direct Investment and foster pace of economic growth.
This was stated by former President FPCCI, Tariq Sayeed during his keynote address at 3rd International Conference on Investment and Privatization at Tehran, said a statement issued by SAARC Chamber of Commerce and industry.
Although OIC countries had undertaken adequate measures in terms of easing doing business, however, amongst the top-20 favourable destinations for FDI, only three OIC countries including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Malaysia managed to get 16th, 18th and 20th place respectively in the ranking released by World Bank Group for the year 2008-09, he informed.
He said that OIC countries in the recent years have undertaken several reforms as a result of that, six OIC countries were among the top 10 reformers in the World Banks easing of doing report, 2008.
Azerbaijan was the top reformer, which rose from 97th place to 33rd place.
Other top 10 reformers including Albania, the Kyrgyz Republic, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Egypt.
However, the average un-weighted rank for all OIC countries is 116.
A large share of the OIC countries the poorer ones-remain in the bottom third in the Doing Business rankings, which means that still most of OIC nations need to ease doing business to the required level by investing- nations.
Tariq Sayeed said that investment in knowledge-based technologies and sophisticated research was necessary for accelerated economic development.
"It is unfortunate that only 2 percent of the scientists and one percent of the technicians involved in research activities are belonged to Muslim countries.
Muslim world's share in the new innovations and inventions in terms of patents registration record and the expenditures on R & D is less than 1 percent, he said.
Sharing national experience, he said that the Government of Pakistan in the recent years had adopted several measures and now the country has undertaken highly liberalized regime.
"The Investment policy of Pakistan offers 100 percent equity, full protection to foreign investment coupled with cheap labour and it was the result of liberal investment and privatization measures that FDI during last five year had grown from less than $1 billion to more than $5 million", he added.
He was of the opinion that due to absence of innovative projects, lack of modern infrastructure, complex procedures and weaker legislative system and inadequate measures for easing doing business in many of OIC countries was major hurdles in inflow of FDI.
In the list of top 20 countries, Saudi Arabia with $24.3 billion was the only Muslim nation, which ranked at 16 in terms of attracting FDI in the country.
Turkey $ 22 billion, UAE $13 billion, Bahrain $ 12.8 billion, Nigeria $12.2 billion, Egypt $ 11.5 billion, Kazakhstan $ 10.2 billion, Brunei $ 10 billion, Malaysia $ 8 billion, Indonesia $ 7 billion were the top-10 OIC countries.
Amongst 57, only 20 countries including above could manage to attract FDI of more than $ 1 billion, while FDI in 37 countries was accounted for less than one billion dollar, he said.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2009