Additional grant to facilitate trade in Central Asia
19 Dec '07
3 min read
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is providing a $3 million grant to facilitate trade among member nations of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) as part of efforts to promote sustained economic progress across the region.
The Integrated Trade Facilitation Support for CAREC will receive an additional $600,000 from the governments of CAREC countries to complete the funding requirement.
“The outcome of the project is greater volume of trade due to time and cost savings as a result of coordinated cross-border regulations, procedures and standards, as well as improved trade logistics,” said Ying Qian, Principal Economist of ADB's East Asia Department.
The project supports the implementation of the trade facilitation component of the Transport and Trade Facilitation Strategy endorsed by the sixth Ministerial Conference on CAREC in November 2007. CAREC is composed of Azerbaijan, People's Republic of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Turkmenistan also participates in CAREC's trade facilitation work.
Strengthened customs cooperation is the core program of the trade facilitation strategy. The project will also come up with an expanded scope of the work program to address broader issues of trade facilitation, focus on trade facilitation efforts on the CAREC transport corridors, adopt a results-based approach in monitoring time and cost savings as the key indicators of the program, and support logistics assessments and planning focusing on priority corridors and developing national and regional implementation strategies to facilitate trade.
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