SCO members recalled the creation of a bank and a development fund

At the SCO summit, the usual threats were discussed - "color revolutions", terrorism, unilateral sanctions . However, the discussion turned to the creation of economic institutions. Now the situation is ripe for their appearance, experts are sure Broadcast of the meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Beijing, CHINA )

SCO went online again

On Tuesday, July 4, India hosted its first Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit since joining the organization in 2017. The meeting was planned in person, like the previous summit held in Samarkand in 2022 (in 2020 and 2021, the forums were held online and hybrid due to the CORONAVIRUS pandemic), but a month before the meeting, the Indian Foreign Ministry announced that the meeting was postponed online.

The Indian side did not provide any official explanation on this matter. Interlocutors of the Indian newspaper The Hindu pointed out that New Delhi did not receive notifications of the intention to attend in person from the leaders of China and Pakistan, President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in due time . India has complicated relations with both countries, although their heads used to visit New Delhi.

At the July 4 summit, Iran became a full member of the SCO, now the organization has nine member countries: India, Iran, Kazakhstan , China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, RUSSIA , Tajikistan, Uzbekistan .

Three countries have the status of an observer state - Afghanistan, Belarus, Mongolia. Nine countries are partners in the SCO dialogue - Azerbaijan , Armenia, Egypt , Cambodia, Qatar, Nepal, Saudi Arabia , Turkey , Sri Lanka. Five more countries - Bahrain, Maldives, UAE, Kuwait, Myanmar - have begun the procedure for obtaining the status of a dialogue partner state.

The SCO was founded in 2001 by six countries - Kazakhstan, China, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Afghanistan and “color revolutions” are more relevant than Ukraine

The summit was opened by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who reminded the audience of the well-known figures - the SCO represents 40% of the world's population and almost one third of the world economy. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev later added that the SCO countries account for a quarter of world GDP and 15% of total world trade.

According to Modi, this representativeness allows the SCO to become "an important voice for the reform of other global institutions, including the UN." According to him, "over the past two decades, the SCO has become an important platform for peace, prosperity and development throughout the Eurasian region." Of the global threats, Modi named terrorism as the main one. He noted that a number of countries "use cross-border terrorism as an instrument of their policy and provide a safe haven for terrorists." “The SCO should not be shy about criticizing such countries. The SCO countries should condemn this. There should be no double standards on terrorism,” he added, without specifying which countries he had in mind (the Indian government has repeatedly accused Pakistan of this before).

Read PIONERPRODUKT .by What if not Dubai. Which luxury locations the UAE should look at Parallel imports legalized in Belarus: how it will help business

“Most of the SCO countries share India's concerns and expectations regarding Afghanistan. We must make joint efforts to help the people of Afghanistan,” Modi called a constant concern in the SCO. Both Tokayev, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about the crisis in Afghanistan at the summit . According to Putin, the situation in Afghanistan "does not become less tense."

Xi Jinping, in his speech, singled out among the threats attempts from outside to inspire "color revolutions" and a new cold war, and unilateral sanctions.

Only Putin spoke about Ukraine at the summit. In his speech, he reiterated his long-stated position, according to which “for a long time, outside our borders, a project was being implemented by external forces to create a virtually hostile state, anti-Russia, from our neighboring country, Ukraine.” External pressure and sanctions have not been able to hold back Russia's development, it is confidently resisting and will continue to resist external pressure, sanctions and provocations, Putin assured the leaders of the SCO, thanking them for their support during the recent attempted armed rebellion.

Financial mechanisms are back on the agenda

The President of Kazakhstan, who assumed the chairmanship of the SCO, during the forum paid much attention to the development of economic cooperation in the organization. “It should be recognized that for more than 20 years it has not been possible to implement a single major economic project under the auspices of the SCO. An obvious factor is the lack of mechanisms for financial support of project activities. Therefore, I propose that the Council of Heads of Government consider the possibility of creating a joint investment fund and make proposals on this important project,” Tokayev said at the meeting (translated by RBC). Other participants of the summit also spoke about the problems with project financing. Japarov noticed, that “for a long time” it was not possible to move forward in the issues of “introducing effective financial mechanisms through the creation of a development bank and the SCO development fund”. Support for the creation of the SCO Development Bank was announced at the summit by Xi Jinping and the President of BelarusALEXANDER LUKASHENKO . The latter noted that this topic had already been discussed.

The members of the organization started talking about the creation of mechanisms for financing projects in the SCO more than ten years ago. China initiated the creation of a countries' development bank in 2010, and Vladimir Putin proposed the creation of a SCO development fund in 2013, recalls TASS .

Provisions on the need to study the issues of creating a development fund (or special account) of the SCO and the SCO development bank wander from one final declaration of the summit to another. However, these structures have not yet been created. The SCO Secretary General in 2016-2018 Rashid Alimov believes that the participating countries lacked the political will for this. “There is a common understanding of their necessity, especially for providing financial support for project activities. All that remains is to show the political will for these financial mechanisms to be created and put into operation, which will make it possible to finance multilateral projects,” he wrote in an article for the Valdai Discussion Club in April last year.

Sanctions against Russia, China and Belarus bring closer the creation of financial institutions in the SCO, there is a need to look for alternative ways of interaction, says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs magazine. “It is very difficult, and the DOLLAR is strong not only because it has the United States behind it, but also because it is very convenient. When so many difficulties associated with sanctions begin, willy-nilly, they will look for other ways. I think they will eventually find it. The fact that China has started talking about this, which is important, means that the path has begun, but it will not be very fast, ”he told RBC.

A critical mass of global players is gradually accumulating in the SCO and things directly related to their development are being discussed, in particular with transport, logistics and various opportunities for implementing macro-regional projects, which, of course, is a step forward, Lukyanov continued. “Just a couple of years ago, the SCO was in a state of some paralysis, especially when India and Pakistan were admitted. Now the organization is gradually coming out of this state. This is not an immediate issue, but I think that in the next three to five years the SCO will be a much more applied structure than it is today,” he concluded.

“Sanctions are a catalyst for intensifying economic cooperation in the SCO and creating all sorts of mechanisms for alternative settlements bypassing Western financial infrastructure. With the beginning of the imposition of sanctions, we see a trend around the world to search for new methods of payment, and so on, ” Vasily Kashin, DIRECTOR of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, told RBC. He added that the SCO was quite effective in resolving issues of regional security. The organization was concentrating on this, while the economic component of the SCO was opposed primarily by Russia itself. Now Moscow , on the contrary, is rather interested in this, Kashin concluded.