UFA, July 9. /TASS/. SCO countries (the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) have learnt to harmonise national economic interests with the interests of the organisation, SCO Secretary General Dmitry Mezentsev told TASS on Thursday.
"It is rather difficult to harmonise national economic interests with the interests of the Organisation by discussing infrastructural projects," Mezentsev said. "The work requires a very meticulous, professional and, unfortunately, unhurried approach."
The sides have been engaged in negotiations on the establishment of SCO financial institutions for a long period of time, Mezentsev said.
"An updated programme of trade and economic cooperation is being drafted now. Its preliminary results should be presented at a meeting of ministers in charge of foreign economic policy - the meeting takes place within the framework of the Euro-Asia Economic Forum in [China’s] Xian on September 24-25 as a preparatory one ahead of a summit to be held in Beijing this December," he said. "These are the steps which will certainly help to strengthen cooperation in trade and the economy, to achieve concrete projects, to update the programme and, correspondingly, the development plan."
"We view as encouraging the fact that in 2014 an agreement to create favourable conditions for automobile transportation was signed at a SCO summit," the SCO secretary general said. "It is not just a very important document facilitating cooperation between transport agencies. It is the document which proves that the SCO countries - the nations with different levels and scopes of the economies - have already learned, by preparing large-scale intergovernmental agreements in the economic sphere, to forecast the ways of harmonising the national economic interests with the interests of the Organisation on the whole."
The agreement outlines construction of transport corridors linking Eastern China and Western Europe, Mezentsev said noting that a proposal to interconnect national programmes for automobile roads within the SCO was on the table at transport ministers’ meeting held in Ufa last April .
"We must be realists and we cannot set unrealistic terms for ourselves," Mezentsev said. "But we understand that economic cooperation is becoming one of the key issues on the SCO agenda."
The SCO summit is held in Ufa on July 9-10 following the BRICS summit.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a permanent regional international association established in Shanghai on June 15, 2001.
Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are the current member-states, with Afghanistan, India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan having a status of observers and Belarus, Turkey and Sri Lanka - of dialogue partners. At a previous summit in Tajikistan’s capital of Dushanbe, India and Pakistan bid to become fully-fledged members of the organisation.