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Economic Cooperation Organization

Asian political and economic intergovernmental organization

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The current framework of the ECO expresses itself mostly in the form of bilateral agreements and arbitration mechanisms between individual and fully sovereign member states. Similar to ASEAN, the ECO maintains dedicated secretariats and administrative bodies to coordinate trade among its member states. Regional initiatives include cross-border agricultural collaboration across the historically integrated Fergana Valley between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as multimodal transit via the Ashgabat Agreement and the Afghanistan–Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement. Bilateral initiatives also focus on regional energy corridors, including the Tabriz–Ankara pipeline and proposed projects such as the TAPI and Iran–Pakistan gas pipeline, intended to move Central Asian energy to industrial hubs across Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey.

The ECO's Secretariat and ECO Cultural Institute are based in Iran, the ECO Trade and Development Bank and ECO Educational Institute are located in Turkey, and the ECO Science Foundation is in Pakistan.

History

The Economic Cooperation Organization was the successor organisation of what was the Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD), founded in 1964, which ended activities in 1979. In 1985, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey joined to form the ECO.

By late 1992, the ECO expanded to include seven new member states: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The date of this expansion, 28 November, is recognized as "ECO Day". The organization continues to address structural challenges, primarily the need to modernize infrastructure and regulatory institutions to utilize regional resources and facilitate sustainable economic growth.

The Economic Cooperation Organisation Trade Agreement (ECOTA) was signed on 17 July 2003 in Islamabad. The ECO Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) was established in Iran in 2009 to promote intra-regional commerce, with member states initially targeting the establishment of a common trade market by 2015.

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