The six member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) agreed on Friday in Dushanbe on measures aimed at deepening and strengthening economic cooperation within the framework of the group.

In a joint communique signed at the fifth meeting of prime ministers of the member countries of the SCO held in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, the heads of government of the six SCO members, Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, agreed on a series of measures to further promote economic and trade cooperation.

The communique, signed by the leaders of the delegations of the six countries to the meeting, said that since the SCO prime ministers meeting in Moscow in Oct. 2005, the member countries had done a lot to strengthen economic and trade cooperation.

The six prime ministers -- Kazakh Prime Minister Daniyal Akhmetov, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Kyrgyz Prime Minister Feliks Kulov, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, Tajik Prime Minister Akil Akilov and Ukzbek Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Azimov -- decided on first demonstrative cooperation programs and set energy, transport, and telecommunications as priorities for short-term cooperation.

They agreed that it was of great importance to establish working panels specializing in promoting cooperation in energy, information technology and telecommunications technology.

The leaders' aim was to inject new vigor into the cooperation in the transport field to implement the demonstration programs aimed at improving transportation infrastructures.

They added that it was important to accelerate the signing of the memo on the inter-governmental draft accord on facilitating transportation within the SCO region.

The leaders also deemed that the integration process must be further developed and the procedures for international transport within the SCO region should be simplified.

They pointed out that the establishment of the SCO Entrepreneurs' Committee and the SCO banks consortium had given fresh impetus to the economic cooperation of the organization.

They maintained that, in order to further promote economic cooperation within the framework of the SCO, the coordination role of the SCO secretariat should be enforced and the importance of the SCO Entrepreneurs' Committee and the SCO banks consortium should be strengthened.

The leaders also welcomed the fact that preferential loans from China had been put into use in cooperation programs within the framework of the organization.

They spoke highly of the importance of such large economic forums as the first Europe-Asia economic forum in Nov. 2005 in Xi'an, China, the SCO industry and trade forum in June 2006 in Shanghai, and the fourth Baykal economic forum in Irkutsk.

The forums had promoted economic cooperation in the region, they said

The SCO groups China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, with Pakistan, Mongolia, Iran and India holding observer status.

Source: Xinhua