On the sidelines of the visit of His Excellency Sheikh Jassim bin Abdulaziz Al Thani, Minister of Business and Trade to Turkey during which he headed the Qatari delegation participating in the meetings of the twenty-eighth session of the Standing Committee of the Economic and Commercial Cooperation of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (COMCEC) held in Istanbul in the presence of the OIC member states and which was opened by the Turkish Prime Minister H.E. Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on behalf of the Turkish President,
HE Sheikh Jassim bin Abdulaziz Al Thani met with his accompanying delegation a number of Turkish officials concerned to in the domains of trade and business and chambers of commerce, including HE Mr. / Mohammed Zafer Caglayan, Minister of Economy in Turkey, with whom HE discussed the latest developments in the trade and economic relations and the ways to deepen and broaden the horizons of cooperation between the State of Qatar and the Republic of Turkey. Their Excellences coordinated as well their positions regarding the commercial topics listed in the agenda of the Comities and the Islamic and International Cooperation Organizations.
It should be noted that the State of Qatar and Turkey had established a joint committee on Trade and Economy in 1985, which held its last session in Doha in 2011. The two countries signed an agreement in 1999 to protect and encourage the trade and investment volume between Qatar and Turkey, and in 2011, the volume of the trade exchange between the two countries had been amounted to approximately three billion and seven hundred million Qatari riyals, with a surplus of 47% in favor of the State of Qatar.