20TH MEETING OF ECO REGIONAL PLANNING COUNCIL KICKS OFF IN ANTALYA, TURKEY
Ankara, February 16 (AZERTAC). The 20th Meeting of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) Regional Planning Council began in Antalya, Turkey, on Tuesday.
The event gathered representatives from Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
Topics of the meeting include increasing the trade volume, implementing new trade projects and expanding passenger carrying capacity within the organization.
Speaking at the meeting, Secretary General of the ECO Mohammad Yahya Maroofi stressed the importance of commercial cooperation among the member-states.
The Secretary General stated the organization would continue to support “new” projects on trade and transport fields.
Turkish State Minister Cevdet Yilmaz said the trade volume of ECO was worth 41.4 billion dollars in 2008 and that this figure represented only 7.1 percent of the global trade volume.
Yilmaz underlined the trade volume within the ECO showed that they needed to make more progress in commercial relations within the organization.
“The trade volume within the ECO is extremely low. These figures show clearly that we have to make more and better efforts to increase the trade volume within the ECO. Free trade agreements could be the starting point of such efforts,” Yilmaz stressed.
ECO is an intergovernmental regional organization established in 1985 by Iran, Pakistan and Turkey for the purpose of promoting economic, technical and cultural cooperation among the Member States.
ECO is the successor organization of Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD) which remained in existence since 1964 up to 1979.
Current members of the ECO include Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
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