Blog

Making an intervention at the 21st Meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Anupriya Patel stressed the need for cooperation between SCO Member States for a balanced and equitable growth in trade and commerce.

She spoke about the opportunities available in the SCO region for mutually beneficial, balanced and equitable gains for all SCO Members and emphasised that trust and transparency determine the sustainability of global trade and preserving the fundamental principles and objectives of the multilateral trading system.

The Minister stressed on the need to work towards enhancing affordable access to medicines, therapeutics, vaccines as well as health care at affordable prices for fighting any pandemic, such as Covid-19, to preserve life, livelihood, food and nutritional security of the poorest.

The MoS highlighted the need to share the best practices on technological development, optimum utilisation of resources, conservation of environment, sustainable distribution of resources so that present and future generations have adequate resources, in a happy environment. On the issue of environment, MOS expressed that the climate agenda at the World Forum should not be used to introduce measures restricting trade and investment cooperation.

MoS also stated that there is a significant gap in digital technologies between developed and developing countries which needs to be narrowed down by building digital capacities.

The virtual meeting was attended by the representative of SCO Secretariat and Heads of Delegations of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.