CARETAKER Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar on Thursday urged Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) countries to enhance their regional share in international trade. Addressing the 16th summit of the organization in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, he pointed out that despite being blessed with natural resources, geographical linkages and cultural heritage, ECO region has been unable to exploit its true trade potential as it had just two per cent share in global trade and 8pc in intra-regional trade. Reiterating Pakistan’s commitment to ECO Vision 2025, Mr Kakar called for collective efforts and accelerated reforms to achieve the organization’s objectives and the region’s trade potential for bringing “colossal” economic and peace dividends.
The Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) was founded in 1985 by Iran, Pakistan and Türkiye to promote economic, technical and cultural cooperation among the member states. It is the successor organization to Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD), which was functional from 1964 to 1979, and its basic charter is the Treaty of Izmir, originally signed in 1977. It received a boost in 1992 when seven more countries – Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan became its members, making the theme of regional cooperation more relevant and diverse. The main objectives of the organization are to remove trade restrictions in the ECO region, to expand intra-regional and inter-regional trade, taking into account the experience of other regions and global economic trends. ECO’s objectives also include cooperation in the fields of agriculture; energy and minerals; finance and economy; industry; trade and investment; transport and communications; environmental protection; economic research and statistics; human resource development and international relations. These are lofty goals and have the potential to address the common woes of the people of the region and enable it to become one of the most vibrant collaborative platforms in the world. No doubt, some progress has been made in different areas but the pace is not satisfactory despite highly favourable characteristics of the organization – all countries are Muslim, have geographical contiguity, enjoy good relations, have no political disputes and are full of natural resources. A case in point is the adoption of an ambitious ‘ECO Vision 2025’ back in 2017, which envisaged clear goals for strengthening cooperation in areas like trade, transport and connectivity, energy, tourism, economic growth, social welfare and environment but the pace of implementation is wanting. In this backdrop, Prime Minister Kakar has outlined a workable plan of action for increasing regional trade, strengthening connectivity, operationalizing major transport corridors and seeking energy security. He supported the ECO’s corridor-based approach like Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan-Afghanistan-Iran (KTAI), Islamabad-Tehran-Istanbul (ITI), Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran (KTI) and others and said the integrated transport projects would help promote trade and connectivity. For the revival of the Istanbul-Tehran-Islamabad rail project, Pakistan was upgrading its rail infrastructure with the cooperation of China to speed up the flow of goods. There is a need for opening more border points within the ECO region to enhance connectivity and trade as connectivity projects would also facilitate the private sector and widen the scope of business and investment. Afghanistan has special significance in regional connectivity and execution of regional projects like CASA-1000, Trans Afghan Railway and TAPI but continued instability and uncertainty is one of the major hurdles in the way of moving meaningfully towards regional cooperation. The ECO countries should, therefore, coordinate their policies on Afghanistan and contribute their share for realization of the goal of a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan. The prospects for infrastructure development in the region can receive a boost if the ECO as a bloc decides to join the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Energy security is another vital issue closely linked to the pace of economic development of a country. Some ECO member states are rich in oil and gas and are also in a position to export electricity to neighbouring countries. They should, therefore, focus on expeditious implementation of projects like CASA-1000, which envisages import of electricity by Pakistan from Tajikistan during summer season and now that Pakistan has a generation capacity of 45,000MW (but its winter requirement is just around 12,000MW) it proposes to export electricity to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan in winter months through the same CASA-1000 transmission line. Similar arrangements in other areas of collaboration could help mitigate economic problems of the member countries and accelerate the pace of socio-economic development.
