Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday put an emphasis on the need of establishing Islamic Megabank project to meet the liquidity needs of Islamic financial institutions and Muslim geography.

Addressing the D-8 summit via video link, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reiterated his call for greater use of local currencies in trade among the members of D-8 group of developing nations.

“In order to protect our countries from currency risks, it is essential that we focus on trade with local money,” Erdoğan said.

Erdoğan said that, ‘for strong and sustainable growth rates, we have to focus on high-tech, high-value-added production.’

He said that, ‘We must renew D-8 according to today’s needs, transform it into a project and result-oriented structure, and take steps to accelerate decision-making processes.’

‘We welcome the initiative ‘D-8 Research and Innovation Pioneers Network’, which includes the most prestigious universities of our countries,’ said the President.

He added that, ‘this network, which makes it possible to share information between our universities and research institutions in innovative fields such as renewable energy, artificial intelligence, robotics, internet of things, big data, block chain and nanotechnology, is critical for our countries to reach their deserved place.’