Turkmenistan will take over the chairmanship of the United Nations Special Programme for the Economies of Central Asia (SPECA) next year, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) Tatiana Molchan told an international conference in Ashgabat.
So far, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have joined SPECA.
Local publication Orient quoted Molchan as saying that participants from SPECA countries had drawn up forward-looking plans that could be implemented under Turkmenistan's chairmanship in 2025. "We are negotiating...". Turkmenistan has already chaired SPECA in 2019. This led to the adoption of the Ashgabat Initiative to reduce barriers to trade and transport through legal instruments, norms and standards.
The first SPECA Summit was held in November last year and adopted a Declaration and Roadmap on Digitalisation for Multimodal Data Exchange along the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor, helping to transform Central Asia into a transport hub of global significance.
Experts told Daryo that SPECA forums discuss the region's important role in diversifying transit routes, digitalisation, trade and transport development.
SPECA was established on 26 March 1998 in Uzbekistan with the signing of the Tashkent Declaration by the Presidents of the Central Asian countries and the Executive Secretaries of UNECE and the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). The aim of the programme is to promote economic development, cooperation and integration into the world economy.
Eziz Boyarov
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