SCO ministerial meeting on economy, trade held in Kyrgyzstan

19:10, 14 November 2012

BISHKEK. November 14. KAZINFORM The 11th Ministerial Meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on economy and trade was held here Tuesday, with the objective of advancing multilateral trade and expanding economic cooperation within the regional bloc.

Participants to the meeting, including SCO Secretary General Muratbek Imanaliev, as well as delegations from the bloc's member states, discussed a wide range of issues and agreed to a draft list of actions for further development within the SCO framework for 2012-2016, which will be submitted for approval of the next Council of Heads of Government of the SCO Member States, which will convene in December 2012 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Xinhua reports.

The SCO, which was founded in Shanghai in 2001, currently has six full members, including China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia , Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is and will continue to be the real center of the mutual integration, said Kyrgyz economy and trade minister Temir Sariyev in an interview after the meeting Tuesday. According to him, the trade volume of Kyrgyzstan with the SCO member countries went up by 30 percent in the first eight months of the year, in comparison with the same period last year.

Sariyev hoped economic integration of the SCO would benefit multilateral cooperation in fields such as transport infrastructure, efficient use of energy resources.