CAREC Senior Officials Meeting 2020

The CAREC senior officials convened online on 20 October 2020 to deliberate on the overall implementation progress of the CAREC 2030 strategy, CAREC program results framework, CAREC tourism strategy 2030, and CAREC gender strategy 2030 for presentation of the documents for endorsement at the 19th CAREC Ministerial on 7 December 2020.

The senior officials meeting (SOM) was chaired by Mr. Habib Zadran, Deputy Minister of Finance of Afghanistan. He emphasized importance of CAREC as a platform for multilateralism and trade facilitation. The CAREC Secretariat delivered its 2020 report, also presented a scoping study on promoting regional health cooperation in CAREC. Country representatives expressed overwhelming support to proposed new strategies and encouraged the CAREC Secretariat to adopt an annual progress reporting format against proposed results indicators to allow for timely corrective measures in strategy implementation.

The CAREC Institute Director Shah briefed participants about Institute’s work in 2020, namely:

 six workshops delivered on topics of infrastructure, climate, and e-commerce
 e-learning platform developed to allow wide access to learning materials and online learning
 eight research completed on climate change, promotion of low-carbon energy, e-commerce development, spatial mapping of economic clusters, migration, tourism development along Almaty-Bishkek corridor, and impact of free trade agreements
 seven research ongoing on SMEs, fintech, vaccination, COVID-19 impact on tourism, water cooperation, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) assessment, and economic corridor assessment
 19 economic/policy/CPMM briefs developed and delivered to CAREC policy makers
 six knowledge sharing webinars conducted on COVID-19 topic and building back better
 research conference and CAREC think tanks forum planned for Q1 2021 to promote findings

The National Focal Point of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Director General Mr. Liu Weihua commended the CAREC Institute on its work in 2020, for adaptations and hard-won achievements in the face of COVID-19 restrictions. He encouraged the Institute to continue close work with the ADB and other development partners, and advance regional cooperation.