Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) ministers from 11 member countries on October 27 unanimously endorsed CAREC 2030, a new Asian Development Bank-supported (ADB) long-term strategy that will take the programme through its third decade of operations, the ADB said. The bank will commit over $5bn to support CAREC 2030 in the next five years.

The 11 members of CAREC are Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

“The strategy is anchored on the mission to connect people, policies, and projects,” the ADB said. “It envisages scaling up and broadening CAREC’s mandate, including supporting regional economic and financial stability, and regional initiatives in the areas of tourism, agriculture and water resources, and health and education. At the same time, CAREC will maintain focus and its comparative advantage in the existing priority areas of transport, energy, trade, and economic corridors development.”

“Adoption of the CAREC 2030 strategy will also help countries in the region achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate change targets under the Paris agreement, while aligning with national development priorities.”

Cumulatively, the CAREC programme has so far allocated over $30bn in investments since the programme’s launch in 2001, where $10.5bn was financed by the ADB. Under CAREC financing, the region has built or rehabilitated 8,592 kilometers (km) of roads and 5,103 km of rail tracks as well as constructed 9,041 km of power transmission lines.

Under the CAREC 2030 financing for next year, ADB will fund the first phase of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) transmission line project for $150mn.