Azerbaijan, Baku, June 7 /Trend, N.Ismayilova/
A total of $15 billion has been invested in such priority areas as trade, transport and energy since the beginning of CAREC Program, the national program coordinator in Azerbaijan, head of staff of the Ministry of Economic Development Samir Veliyev said at the high-level meeting of member countries of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation in Baku today.
"Despite that the CAREC Program faced some difficulties during the global economic crisis, in general the crisis did not weaken the implementation of the program," said Veliyev.
He said the success of the program and the experience gained will provide a good basis for activities in the subsequent ten-year phase of the program realization and will also be useful for enhancing cooperation between countries of the region.
The meeting discussed the plan of actions in connection with a decade of CAREC, as well as the action plan for 2011 and strategy for CAREC-2020.
"A series of events are planned to be conducted in Baku in connection with the decade of the program. In particular, a ministerial conference is expected to be conducted in November," Valiyev said.
He said as part of the strategy for CAREC-2020, projects will be implemented to deepen integration in three key areas - trade, energy and transportation, and support will be provided in areas such as ecology, etc.
It was said at the meeting that a meeting within the "Regional improvement in the field of border service" project in Baku on June 9.
CAREC is a partnership of ten participating countries (Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and six international organizations (ADB, EBRD, IMF, IDB, UNDP and World Bank).
The ADB has been secretariat of CAREC since 2001.