SMIIC Secretary General, Mr. İhsan ÖVÜT and his accompanying delegation attended the 34^th Ministerial Session of the COMCEC.

The 34^th  Ministerial Session of the COMCEC was held on 26-29 November 2018 in Istanbul with the participation of the member countries, the OIC General Secretariat and the following subsidiary, affiliated and specialized organs (SMIIC, SESRIC, ICDT, IDB, ICCIA and OISA etc.).

 The Session reviewed and discussed the progress achieved in the implementation of the resolutions and decisions of the 33^rd  Session of the COMCEC, which was held in November 2017 in Istanbul, Turkey.

Under the Agenda Item; Intra-OIC Trade, Mr. İhsan ÖVÜT, SMIIC Secretary General, briefed the Session on the latest developments and activities of SMIIC by presenting the SMIIC report prepared for the 34^th  Session of the COMCEC.

In his speech, Mr. ÖVÜT mentioned:

• the new membership of Republic of Kazakhstan and Republic of Uzbekistan to SMIIC.

• that SMIIC has continued its Capacity Building activities of SMIIC for OIC Member States in the fields of quality infrastructure elements. One of these being welcoming the proposal about Establishment of an Excellence Metrology Center under activities of SMIIC Metrology Council,

• and that we have successfully organized the 4^th and 5^th SMIIC Technical Committee Week Meetings and SMIIC Committee on Standards for Conformity Assessment (SMIIC/CCA) meetings held on 16-20 April 2018 and 24-28 September 2018 in Istanbul, Turkey in which 30 standards development projects are being worked on by our prominent experts from the SMIIC Members. As a result of the hard of SMIIC Technical Committees 7 standards in the pipeline of being published within a few months,

• that the awaited development of the “Halal Cosmetics-General Requirements as OIC/SMIIC 4:2018 Standard” and “ISO 50001:2011 Energy management systems -Requirements with guidance for use as OIC/SMIIC 19:2018” has been completed and published. They are now available for the use of the industry and can be purchased from the SMIIC website as are all OIC/SMIIC Standards worldwide.

• the successful completion of the SMIIC Training Program 2018 which was funded by the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC) of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) under the project title Harmonization of National Halal Standards with the OIC/SMIIC Halal Standards (2017-SMIIC-437) held on the 16-20 July 2018 in Istanbul, Turkey. We would like to take this opportunity to thank COMCEC for the funding and to SESRIC for the support.

Resolutions of the 34^th Session of the COMCEC relating to SMIIC are as follows:

v) Trade Related Activities of SMIIC

69- Welcomes the activities of Standards and Metrology Institute for Islamic Countries (SMIIC) in the area of standardization, metrology and accreditation and their impact on trade facilitation and capacity building projects for Member States.

70- Welcomes the Republic of Kazakhstan and Republic of Uzbekistan as the new members to SMIIC, which has increased the number of SMIIC Member States to 37 along with 3 Observers and invites the Member States to become a member of SMIIC and actively participate in its technical committees (TCs), Metrology and Accreditation Councils.

71- Welcomes the increasing visibility of the SMIIC and expresses its appreciation to the SMIIC for organizing capacity building activities in its field of competence and invites Member States to support increase its visibility in the international for a, particularly through its accession as an observer to the WTO-Technical barriers to Trade(TBT) Committee.

72- Invites the Member States to adopt and use the OIC/SMIIC Standards as their national standards with a view to contributing to the harmonization of standards and alleviating technical barriers to trade among the Member States and calls upon the relevant Member States, which use OIC/SMIIC Standards, to officially adopt the standards according to SMIIC adoption guidelines.

73- Expresses its appreciation to the Republic of Turkey for hosting and SMIIC and ICDT for supporting the organization of the World Halal Summit (WHS) Istanbul on 23-25 November 2017 and calls upon the Member States to participate in the “Istanbul 2018 World Halal Summit” to be held on 29 November – 02 December 2018, under the auspices of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey.

74- Notes with satisfaction the organization of the 1^st Meeting of the Standardization Management Council (SMC) held on 26-27 June 2018, 1^st Meeting of the Management of SMIIC Accreditation Council (AC) held on 26-27 February 2018, 2^nd Meeting of the Management of SMIIC AC on 28-29 June and 5^th SMIIC Metrology Council (MC) Meeting on 19-20 April 2018 in İstanbul, Turkey.