Chechelashvili: Free Economic Zone is one of the most promising projects of the GUAM

Baku. 21 December. REPORT.AZ/ Free Economic Zone is one of the most promising projects of GUAM, Report was told by the GUAM Secretary General Valery Chechelashvili.

"When GUAM started, it was an organization that was sitting in the same room. After that, there was organizational and functional formation of the structure and the secretariat, has earned a free trade zone, a department for combating organized crime, put a system of cryptographic protection, approved the ministers of transport and transit corridor of GUAM, we have four working bodies and eight working groups with its sub-working groups, which have their own plans for the development of sectoral cooperation, a strategy of sectoral cooperation of GUAM political interaction at the sites of international organizations, cooperation with external partners - the US, Japan, the Visegrad Group", said V.Chechelashvili.

Speaking about the economic component of relations between GUAM Secretary General noted that the volume of trade of GUAM at the maximum level was 4.5 billion US dollars. He pointed out that, now the figure is about 3.5 billion US dollars.

According to the GUAM Secretary General, because of the war in the Ukraine, the crisis in international relations, including economic ties between the member countries turnover has reduced, but "we have all the institutions that it has successfully developed".

V.Chechelavishili expressed the view that a free economic zone is one of the most promising projects. "For this we also have authority on trade and the economy - it is a working group. There is a separate action by the Committee on Transport and Trade Facilitation, a meeting of which I am now returning from Tbilisi, where they were taken next, very interesting documents and sounded interesting initiatives synchronization and harmonization of customs and border procedures, which will help our exporters, importers and manufacturers feel comfortable at border crossings and during work on the space of the GUAM countries", he said.

According to him, GUAM is the only workable framework for multilateral cooperation in the CIS area. "Because of the known causes of LPG has long given up, and in the BSEC, which is already experiencing serious problems after a complication of Russian-Turkish relations, I do hardly imagine further full activity. We do not lose time on minor things that takes a long time in international organizations. We are working in a system of international coordinates in a system of foreign policy priorities. This is a friendly partner of the state. The potential for collaboration is practically inexhaustible and there a lot of things to implement", the GUAM Secretary General concluded.