SCO Offers the Path to Economic Boom for Expanded Region

The 24th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) concluded last week in Astana with the adoption of the Astana Declaration that lays a solid foundation for building a fair representation of a multipolar world with more equality, justice and balanced global governance.

With the presence and commitments of the state leaders across Asia and East Europe, the Declaration highlighted the importance of SCO’s role in maintaining regional security and stability and promoting socio-economic development with the advocacy of mutual and meaningful consultations for achieving the shared beneficial results.

The message in the Declaration shows greater solidarity among the member states of SCO as they have collaborated on moving ahead together for building a shared future for mankind in terms of security, economy, energy, trade, digitalization, E-commerce, information security, finance, eco-tourism etc.

The very significant output of SCO Summit 2024 is the approval of the Action Plan of the Economic Development Strategy until 2030, which is the future mechanism of economic collaboration between member states as the global environment has become fragile and volatile in the context of the rising voices of anti-globalization, trade protectionism and unilateralism.

Amid the rising troubled geoeconomic and geopolitical situation fueled by the zero-sum and Cold War mentality of the West, close cooperation between SCO member nations attaches much-needed importance to ensuring economic stability and sustainable development.

For this purpose, China’s focus on new quality productive forces is offering new economic opportunities for all SCO nations in pursuit of innovative and high-quality development driven by scientific and technological advancements.

In this context, SCO should take the advantage of Chinese wisdom regarding new quality productive forces that will enable the member states to change the economic development path from traditional growth models towards new growth engines.

China has also advocated promoting more convenient interconnectivity and more fluent trade among SCO members in the region.

Since its inception, SCO with the Shanghai Spirit and pragmatism has gained splendid achievements in three key areas including cultural and people-to-people exchanges, security cooperation and especially economic integration.

China, Russia and other SCO members are civilizations with a long history of development and known as great emerging economies. They are in a critical stage of their development and revitalization. A healthy, stable and booming SCO is in the interest of the Eurasian region. It has attracted the attention of the international community through its agenda of equal economic development for all, devoid of any political strings or conditionalities, and based on noninterference in any country’s internal affairs.

It is widely believed that the outcome of Astana summit has helped in building a new avenue of cooperation by setting the modern trends of development which will further lead towards ultimate prosperity in the Eurasian region.

The track record of SCO economic collaboration is also a testament that trade within the member countries of SCO has emerged as an essential ingredient of the economic framework. It also brought long-lasting economic benefits to people living in the region.

As per the latest statistics, SCO member states account for half of the world’s population, a quarter of the global land arena and a quarter of the global economic output. It clearly empowers the organization to rebalance global economic governance that can tackle the economic challenges in Eurasian region and beyond by creating more opportunities for expanding economic relations.

It can be described that SCO has injected a positive growth trajectory in the region as its member states are projecting high growth rates from 4 to 8 percent on average. It is calculated that the contribution of SCO members to global GDP equals to 30 percent, with the foreign trade of all these countries in the organization reaching 8 trillion dollars, equal to a quarter of overall global trade.

These economic results are achieved through SCO regional economic cooperation, which was based on various economic frameworks especially the Memorandum on Basic Goals and Directions of Regional Economic Cooperation and Launching the Trade and Investment Facilitation Process signed back in 2001. This basic agreement injected new momentum into trade activities and the volume of imports and exports in the SCO region. SCO has been proved as a great support to increase the economic volume in member countries and the people are gaining enormous benefits from it.

The article reflects the author’s opinions, and not necessarily the views of China Focus.