The Meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Business Council Board was held previously to the SCO Business Forum in Beijing on July 16. Sergei Katyrin, the President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, Chairman of the Russian part of the SCO Business Council, attended the meeting. In his speech, he noted the significant growing interest of domestic business circles in the cooperation agenda within the Organization, and informed the participants about the creation of three working groups on current areas of cooperation in the Russian part of the SCO Business Council.

Resource Agribusiness Group headed the working group on agriculture and the agro-industrial complex along with Gazprombank and FESCO Transportation Group, which took over the management of the groups on energy and green economy, as well as on transport and logistics, respectively. According to Mr Katyrin: “The activities of the created working groups will be aimed, first of all, at identifying bottlenecks that hinder interaction in a specific industry, as well as at developing recommendations for their elimination.”

Dmitry Antonov, Director for External Relations and Sustainable Development of Resource Agribusiness Group, presented the main vectors of work within the group on agriculture and the agro-industrial complex during the business forum, which was held as a continuation of the SCO business program in the capital of the PRC on July 17. The event under the “Promoting the “Shanghai Spirit” motto: business circles in action” was organized by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and the China Chamber of International Commerce. The problems of sustainable development, green transformation, maintaining supply chains and other issues relevant to the long-term interests of all the SCO countries were discussed on the sidelines of the forum.