Kazakhstan's Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov attended the meeting of the Council of Heads of Government of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states held in Dushanbe. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Sputnik Kazakhstan.
Olzhas Bektenov noted the importance of reducing trade barriers between SCO countries, simplifying trade procedures, and increasing the share of national currencies in mutual settlements.
"Currently, the share of national currencies in Kazakhstan's cross-border payments with SCO member states has approached 70%," the statement said.
Kazakhstan also proposed linking the "Belt and Road" initiative with regional transport corridors and increasing the volume of transportation along the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route to 10 million tons per year.
In the field of digitalization, Kazakhstan put forward an initiative to expand cooperation with SCO countries on artificial intelligence technologies and create a network of artificial intelligence centers.
According to the Prime Minister, over the past five years, Kazakhstan's export of IT services has grown 34 times and reached $1.1 billion.
Following the meeting, a number of documents were signed related to trade and economic cooperation, transport links, and the implementation of investment projects in the industrial sector. Among them is the concept of creating an SCO digital platform for the development of international multimodal freight transportation.