CAREC Institute to be headquartered in Urumqi, China

The 13th ministerial meeting of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) announced here Thursday in the Kyrgyz capital that the CAREC Institute would be headquartered in Urumqi, China.

During the two-day meeting which started Wednesday, it was announced that the institute would set up its headquarters in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, and will start operation in December 2014.

China's Vice Minister of Finance Hu Jinglin also announced that the Chinese government has formally approved the decision to build the CAREC Institute as an intergovernmental organization.

The CAREC Institute aims to enhance the quality of the CAREC program through knowledge generation and capacity building for effective regional cooperation towards the goal of accelerating economic growth in the CAREC region.

Hu called the establishment of the institute a win-win initiative in the history of Central Asia regional economic cooperation, and expressed the hope that future collaboration would take advantage of the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and speed up regional economic integration.

Regional financing network should act as the funding guarantee for the development of Central Asia, while research and capacity building serves to boost cooperation and economic growth, the Chinese official proposed.

Hu also pledged China's commitment to the strategy of mutual benefit and common prosperity, in an effort to support regional collaboration and sustained economic growth.

The theme of the 13th CAREC Ministerial Conference was "Linking Connectivity with Economic Transformation in CAREC". Representatives from 10 member countries, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations Development Program, as well as some bilateral aid agencies of developed countries attended the meeting.

The CAREC program is an ADB-supported initiative brought up in 1996 and started officially in 2001 to encourage economic cooperation among countries in the Central Asian region.

The program promotes regional cooperation in transport, energy, trade facilitation, and other key sectors of mutual interest to the 10 member countries -- Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.