New Delhi (NVI): Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu will chair the 19th Summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s (SCO) council of heads of government on November 30.
The virtual summit is expected to focus on further strengthening trade, economic and cultural cooperation among the eight member nations of the influential grouping, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a press release.
India assumed the Chairmanship of the SCO Council of Heads of Government on 2 November 2019 as per rotation from the previous Chair – Uzbekistan and will complete its tenure on 30 November 2020 by hosting the 19th session of the SCO Council of Heads of Government (CHG) at the level of Prime Ministers in the virtual format.
It will be the first time that a summit-level meeting will be held under India’s watch since it gained full -membership of the SCO in 2017, the press release stated.
The SCO CHG deals primarily with the trade and economic agenda and approves its annual budget. Apart from the other seven SCO members (Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan), four observer states—Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia—will also participate. Turkmenistan will be invited as a special guest, MEA statement said.
India considers SCO as an important regional organisation to promote cooperation in the areas of peace, security, trade, economy and culture and is committed to widening cooperation by playing a proactive, positive and constructive role in the organisation, it added.
During its Chairmanship, India has particularly focused on creating three new pillars of cooperation: Startups and Innovation, Science and Technology and Traditional Medicine and also proposed many other concrete initiatives.
“By hosting the 19th meeting of the SCO CHG, India hopes to further strengthen trade, economic and cultural cooperation within SCO,” said the MEA press release.
The meeting will end with a Joint Communique that contains the major proposals of Member States on issues of trade and economic cooperation. There will also be a report on the implementation of the SCO Multilateral Trade and Economic Cooperation prepared by the SCO Secretariat.
-CHK
