SCO will use business capacities

By Vestnik Kavkaza

On December 14-15 a summit of heads of governments of the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will take place in Astana. The strategy for the SCO development till 2025 is going to be approved in 2015 at the next summit of the organization.

“We have a draft, and it should be considered in the member states of the organization. After that we will hold talks and form a working group. Probably next year at a summit which will take place in July 2015 in Russia we will adopt the strategy,” Shakhrat Nutyshev, the coordinator of Kazakhstan for the SCO activities, said.

However, Sergei Kanavsky, the Executive Secretary of the Business Council of the SCO, points out difficulties in building effective cooperation within the SCO because of different levels of economic development in member countries: “Usually integration is a final goal of forming supranational bodies which are responsible for some spheres of economic development, economy, and cooperation in the sphere. It is difficult to imagine a supranational organization, a structure which could control the economies of such different countries. Do you realize what the Chinese economy means and what the Kyrgyz and Uzbek economies mean? In comparison with Russia, the Chinese economy is at an unachievable level. So it was the right decision made to deal with project financing.”

According to Kanavsky, “the project requires its initial development, revealing interested participants and points of contact in fulfillment of the project, i.e. places where efforts of several countries could combine. The initial task of the Business Council was encouragement of the development of projects of a multilateral character. But for business, the scheme turned out to be unacceptable. Business usually means two sides, at most three sides.”

Sergei Kanavsky spoke about the main projects of the organization: “There are several projects: foundation of an analysis club, use of transit potential where initially several countries which expressed their interest in cooperation in some spheres are engines for cooperation in the spheres with other countries. For example, we had started the Chelyabinsk project before China expressed its interest in developing an economic Silk Road. But it suits the arrangements perfectly, as today goods from China are imported by sea in 40-50 days; while Russia has an opportunity to deliver Chinese goods in 10-12 days, using Transsib, the Chelyabinsk Corridor, the corridor near Orenburg, and so on. Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have expressed interest in the system of transport logistic complexes, as they have very interesting projects in the sphere. So within the framework of the Business Council a system of cooperation between the transport logistic complexes of different directions (agriculture, industry, science and so on) was formed. Thus, in this case project cooperation gives an opportunity to use all the capacities of business broadly for realization of directions which are defined by the heads of state and governments without enforcing some elements of responsibility.”