Appropriateness of the Basic Needs Approach to Regional Economic Co-operation among Islamic Countries

Abstract

The idea of economic co-operation has been explained in the literature in terms of economic interdependency among nation states and different well-defined regions of the world.¹ The idea has thereby conveyed the meaning of collaboration among nation states and regions through international trade, joint ventures, resource flows and resource mobilisation. Economic co-operation has always been implicitly construed as a socio-economic development concept. Yet there appears to be only an overt emphasis on the purely social aspects. For instance, in the context of North—South relations, we find the predominance of ideas such as the trickle-down formula of economic growth,² efficiency pricing of goods and commodities,³ bias towards large-scale enterprises in the name of economies of scale, the marked decline in the flow of ODA to developing countries, and the high cost of borrowing in the face of the dollar-induced levels of interest rates.⁴ Some of these facts are expressed in Table 9.1.