Developing eight countries

The Developing 8 (D-8 or Developing Eight) are a group of developing countries with largeMuslim populations that have formed an economic development alliance. It consists ofBangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey. The objectives ofD-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation are to improve member states’ position in the global economy, diversify and create new opportunities in trade relations, enhance participation in decision-making at international level, and improve standards of living. D-8 is a global arrangement rather than a regional one, as the composition of its members reflects. Organization for Economic Cooperation (D-8) is a forum with no adverse impact on bilateral and multilateral commitments of the member countries, emanating from their membership to other international or regional organizations.<a href="http://www.chitika.com/publishers/apply?refid=waqarmunawar"><img src="http://images.chitika.net/ref_banners/200x200_referral.png" /></a></di

History 

[edit]

The official D-8 logo.

The D-8 was founded by Necmettin Erbakan, former TurkishPrime Minister.^[2][3][4] The group was established after an announcement in Istanbul, Turkey on 15 June 1997. Membership is open to countries other than the current member-states, though no expansion is currently planned.

As stated by the D-8 Facts and Figures Publication: "The objectives of D-8 are to improve developing countries' positions in the world economy, diversify and create new opportunities in trade relations, enhance participation in decision-making at the international level, and provide better standards of living." The main areas of cooperation include finance, banking, rural development, science and technology, humanitarian development, agriculture, energy, environment, and health.

Purposes and objectives [edit]

In the first Summit Declaration (Istanbul, 1997), the main objective of D-8 is stated to be socio-economic development in accordance with following principles:

• Peace instead of conflict.
• Dialogue instead of confrontation.
• Cooperation instead of exploitation.
• Justice instead of double-standard.
• Equality instead of discrimination.
• Democracy instead of oppression.

Thus D-8 objectives are to improve developing countries’ positions in the world economy, diversify and create new opportunities in trade relations, enhance participation in decision-making at the international level, and provide better standard of living. By the same token, D-8 is a forum with no adverse impact on bilateral and multilateral commitments of the member countries, emanating from their membership of other regional or international organizations.

The fifth D-8 Summit Declaration (Bali, 2006) produced the following, as illustration of the application of the group's objectives:

• Commitment to work together to solve the problem of economic disparities within our countries.
• Reaffirm commitment to enhance cooperation in the field of energy to develop alternative and renewable energy resources.
• Emphasise the importance of D-8 in contributing to the economic development of its member countries and ensure that it promotes global trade.

Developing 8 leaders summit [edit]

Recent and Planned D-8 Summits

	Date	Host country	Host leader	Location held
1	15 June 1997	Turkey	Necmettin Erbakan	Istanbul
2	1–2 March 1999	Bangladesh	Sheikh Hasina	Dhaka
3	25 February 2001	Egypt	Mohamed Morsi	Cairo
4	18 February 2004	Iran	Mohammad Khatami	Tehran
5	13 May 2006	Indonesia	Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono	Bali
6	8 July 2008	Malaysia	Abdullah Ahmad Badawi	Kuala Lumpur
7	8 July 2010	Nigeria	Goodluck Jonathan	Abuja
8	21 November 2012	Pakistan	Nomiated Mr. Nawaz Sharif	Islamabad

Preferential trade agreement [edit]

Representatives of each of the eight developing countries signed a Preferential Trade Agreement on 14 May 2006 at the fifth D-8 Summit at Bali, Indonesia. The agreement is designed to gradually reduce tariffs on specific goods between member-states, with a supervisory committee overseeing the process. The purpose of the agreement is to reduce barriers to free trade between member states, as well as promote inter-state cooperation.

The combined population of the eight countries is about 60% of all Muslims, or close to 13% of the world’s population.

In 2006, trade between the D-8 member states stood at $35 billion, and it was around $68 billion in 2010.Transactions between the 8 developing countries account for 3.3 percent of world trade. The figure is projected to reach 10-15 percent in the next few years.

Structure [edit]

The Developing 8 is organized into three bodies:

• the Summit,
• the Council,
• the Commission.

The Summit, which is convened every two years, has the highest level of authority, and is composed of the leaders of each member state.

The Council is the principal decision-making body and forum for consideration of issues relating to the D-8, and is composed of the foreign affairs ministers of each member state.

The Commission has executive authority, and is composed of Commissioners appointed by each member state's government. Commissioners are responsible for promoting compliance with D8 directives in their respective nation. Finally, an executive director is appointed by D-8 members to facilitate communication and to act in a supervisory capacity during each summit or lower-level assembly.

Stature in international politics [edit]

The Developing 8 does not have a large impact on the affairs of more influential international organizations such as the United Nations,NATO, or ASEAN. The purpose of the organization is to coordinate the efforts of each member state, and not necessarily to join together in order to increase each member's collective influence in global politics. Since each member is still able to act unilaterally without significant repercussions from other members, the bargaining power of the organization on the world stage is constrained

secret information of Pakistan hacked by CIA

               secret information of Pakistan hacked by CIA 

There's one reason why the administration, James Clapper and the NSA should just keep their mouths shut as the PRISM-gate fallout escalates: with every incremental attempt to refute some previously unknown facet of the US Big Brother state, a new piece of previously unleaked information from the same intelligence organization now scrambling for damage control, emerges and exposes the brand new narrative as yet another lie, forcing even more lies, more retribution against sources, more journalist persecution and so on.

The latest piece of news once again comes from the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald who this time exposes the NSA's datamining tool "Boundless Informant" which according to leaked documents collected 97 billion pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide in March 2013 alone, and "3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period."

This is summarized in the chart below which shows that only the middle east has more active NSA-espionage than the US. Also, Obama may not want to show Xi the activity heatmap for China, or else the whole "China is hacking us" script may promptly fall apart.

Using simple, non-AES 256 breaking math, 3 billion per month amounts to some 100 million intrusions into the US per day, or looked at from another perspective, just a little more than the "zero" which James Clapper vouched announced earlier today is the applicable number of US citizens falling under the NSA's espionage mandate: "Section 702 cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, or any other U.S. person, or to intentionally target any person known to be in the United States." Oops.

But it gets worse for the NSA. As the Guardian reports, "Emmel, the NSA spokeswoman, told the Guardian: "Current technology simply does not permit us to positively identify all of the persons or locations associated with a given communication (for example, it may be possible to say with certainty that a communication traversed a particular path within the internet. It is harder to know the ultimate source or destination, or more particularly the identity of the person represented by the TO:, FROM: or CC: field of an e-mail address or the abstraction of an IP address).Thus, we apply rigorous training and technological advancements to combine both our automated and manual (human) processes to characterize communications – ensuring protection of the privacy rights of the American people. This is not just our judgment, but that of the relevant inspectors general, who have also reported this."

In other words, Americans are absolutely the target of billions of monthly intrusions, but said data "mining" is exempted because it is difficult to identify in advance if a US citizen is implicated in any metadata chain.

Only it isn't as it is the whole premise behind Boundless Informant.

An NSA factsheet about the program, acquired by the Guardian, says: "The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country."

The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message.

The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013. One document says it is designed to give NSA officials answers to questions like, "What type of coverage do we have on country X" in "near real-time by asking the SIGINT [signals intelligence] infrastructure."

Under the heading "Sample use cases", the factsheet also states the tool shows information including: "How many records (and what type) are collected against a particular country."

A snapshot of the Boundless Informant data, contained in a top secret NSA "global heat map" seen by the Guardian, shows that in March 2013 the agency collected 97bn pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide.

Iran was the country where the largest amount of intelligence was gathered, with more than 14bn reports in that period, followed by 13.5bn from Pakistan. Jordan, one of America's closest Arab allies, came third with 12.7bn, Egypt fourth with 7.6bn and India fifth with 6.3bn. 

Budget 2013-14 Pakistan

                                    Budget 2013-14 pakistanhttp://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013%5C06%5C08%5Cstory_8-6-2013_pg5_

ISLAMABAD: The corporate sector regulator, Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) strongly resisted the tax budget proposal for 2013-14 of imposing 35 percent tax on mutual fund’s profit on debt distribution received by corporate entities.

The SECP has warned that this would lead to a temporary increase in the tax revenue but the spillover effect of liquidity crunch due to likelihood of heavy redemptions and decline in investor confidence will have adverse impacts on development of bond markets and business viability of mutual fund industry in the immediate and long-term. 

The commission’s chairman informed this in a letter to the tax bosses during a bilateral meeting, which discussed the SECP’s tax proposals on June 3, 2013 for inclusion in the Finance Bill 2013. SECP envisions that the implementation of these proposals will go a long way to foster harmonious development and sustainable growth of investment opportunities in various sectors of the economy.

However, the SECP chairman has highlighted that it has been reported that Federal Board of Revenue has proposed to increase the tax on the distribution received by corporate entities from mutual funds, private equity or venture capital funds out of its income from profit on debt, from existing 10 percent to 35 percent - the normal rate chargeable to corporate taxpayers.

SECP, being a regulator for the corporate sector and capital markets including inter-alia the mutual fund, venture capital and private equity (the CIS) strongly believes that the proposed increase in tax rate for distribution from the CIS on profit on debt received by corporate entities will be detrimental for the growth of the CIS industry which is still at a very nascent stage of development in Pakistan.

Highlighting SECP’s concerns on the proposal, it pointed out that presently corporate entities are the major investors in the CIS industry, holding in particular money market and income funds where they hold 26 percent of asset under management of such funds. The distribution of these funds is currently chargeable to tax at the rate of 10 percent of income.

The Finance Act 2012 had enhanced the taxation on the income received by a banking company from distribution of a mutual fund out of its income from profit on debt, from 10 percent to 25 percent for tax year 2013 and 35 percent from tax year 2014 and onwards. However, distribution from a mutual fund out of its income from profit on debt received by a corporate investor other than banking companies remained at 10 percent. 

The spirit behind maintaining the taxation differential between banks and corporate was in consideration of current structure of financial sector which predominantly is banking centric (constituting 88.9 percent of the aggregate assets of Pakistan’s financial sector) which makes it vulnerable to systemic risk. It is therefore, imperative to promote the alternative non-bank financial system to diversify the inherent systemic risk and enhance the resilience of the financial system. For development of the mutual fund industry, as an alternative investment avenue it is necessary to continue the taxation incentive to corporate (other than banks) investors to ensure that investment in mutual funds remains attractive for them. It is also pertinent to mention that the tax on profit on debt is a final tax for all persons except the corporate entities. The FBR proposal of taxing mutual fund’s profit on debt distribution received by corporate entities at 35 percent will lead to a temporary increase in the tax revenue but the spillover effect of liquidity crunch due to likelihood of heavy redemptions and decline in investor confidence will have adverse impacts on development of bond markets and business viability of mutual fund industry in the immediate and long-term. 

SECP therefore, strongly resist consideration of the proposal to increase the tax on income received by corporate entities from the CIS distribution out of its income from profit on debt, the letter concluded.

Prime minister of pakistan

                                                              Nawas Sharif

With the elections over and a new government in place, Pakistan will have to make several important choices in the international arena. A great deal has changed since the last time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif occupied the office he won back after 14 years. More will change in the months and years ahead. Some of this will be the result of what Pakistan has done to itself over the last decade and a half. Some will happen because of the developments outside Pakistan’s control.

From Pakistan’s perspective, perhaps the most significant development is the lack of respect for the country in the western world. Several surveys carried out by western think tanks and agencies rate the country as one of the least liked in the world. The BBC, for instance, surveyed more than 26,000 people around the world to rate their perception of 16 countries and found that Pakistan was seen positively by only 15 per cent of the respondents. Such a low opinion in democracies influences the making of public policy. Pakistan is now in a difficult world in which it has lost respect.

It was a relatively simple world the last time Prime Minister Sharif was in power. It was dominated by one superpower, the United States. Bill Clinton, America’s supremely confident president, governed an equally supremely confident nation. The Soviet Union had collapsed eight years earlier under the weight of its unworkable economic system. In the final year of Nawaz’s second tenure as prime minister, President Clinton had used his enormous influence to negotiate peace between India and Pakistan. The two countries were about to go to war over the failed Kargil adventure undertaken by General (retd) Pervez Musharraf. India had responded with resolve and firmness the general had not expected. The two countries were close to an all-out war when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif requested President Clinton for help. The American president, sensing the danger in an open conflict between two nations armed with nuclear weapons, worked out a solution that saved Pakistan’s face while Islamabad accepted all the demands made by India. These included total withdrawal from Kargil.

In 1999, Afghanistan seemed more settled than it had been for more than a decade. The Taliban, having overcome the resistance offered to their advance by all but one warlord that had fought the Soviet Union in 1979-89, had brought peace to the country. They ruled the Afghan nation with an iron hand, imposing on it what they believed to be the Islamic way of governance. The regime was recognised by three Muslim countries — Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — but was shunned by the rest of the world.

Fourteen years later, in 2013, the third-time prime minister looks at a very different world. Since 1999, the confidence with which Washington dealt with the world is mostly gone. A deep recession in 2007-09 and disagreement in the country about the role of the state have affected the American mood and increased the citizenry’s worry about its future. Since 1999, the United States has been involved in two long wars, both in the Muslim world. It pulled out of Iraq in 2012 and is getting ready to leave Afghanistan. In both countries, a lot of blood was shed and trillions of dollars were spent but what will be left is chaos. These two wars have drained energy out of America and left it weak. Across the Atlantic, the European Union is faced with the deepest economic crisis since its creation. And Japan has been in throes of a recession that has proven to be exceptionally stubborn. As opposed to the old industrial nations, several Asian countries continue to see their economies expand.

China now poses a serious challenge to America’s domination. The most important change from Pakistan’s perspective is the rise of China. It now has the second largest economy in the world, having passed Japan in 2010. It has become the world’s leading exporter; it also surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest trading nation in 2012. India has seen its economy grow at a rate almost three times the average for Pakistan in the last 14 years. Islamabad can no longer look at New Delhi as a near-equal. India has a much larger economy and much stronger military than was the case in 1999. The Muslim world has also changed significantly since the last time Nawaz Sharif occupied the prime minister’s office. The Arab spring of 2011 has felled three long-enduring regimes that had been in power for more than 127 years combined. Regimes changed in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen as a result of the pressure exerted by the Arab street. There is civil war in the fourth Arab state, Syria. The continuing conflict in Syria threatens to pit the Sunni states against those in which the Shias are in majority. Pakistan, with the world’s second largest Shia population, will have to worry about the possibility of this development.

While Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said that solving the country’s energy crisis must be his top priority, he cannot ignore the world outside his country’s borders. He must understand the shape the world has taken since the last time he held the reins of power and also the change that is likely to occur in the future.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/561048/the-world-changed-while-the-pm-was-out-of-power/