TEHRAN – Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) head called for stronger economic and logistics cooperation among Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) members, stressing the need to streamline customs procedures, standardize regulations, and improve transport infrastructure to ensure sustainable growth in the region.

Speaking via video message at the SCO ministers’ meeting on economic and trade affairs in Vladivostok on Saturday, Mohammad Ali Dehghan Dehnavi said the complex shifts in the global economy highlighted the urgency of regional convergence. He described the ministers’ draft statement as a strategic roadmap, not merely a document, urging members to adopt a more pragmatic and action-oriented approach.

Dehghan Dehnavi underlined the importance of resilient supply chains, noting that the statement’s reference to developing international transport routes as the backbone of intra-regional trade was a unique opportunity for deeper connectivity. He said Iran’s geostrategic location linking East and West positioned it to play a key role in expanding trade and diversifying exchanges.

He also proposed advancing the SCO’s initiative for special settlement accounts as a tool to mitigate the negative effects of unilateral sanctions. The mechanism, he said, would rest on three pillars: expanding the use of national currencies, building shared digital payment infrastructure including central bank digital currencies, and creating a multilateral currency-swap fund to support members under pressure or facing liquidity crises.

The TPO head highlighted Iran’s readiness to strengthen cooperation in knowledge-based industries, including artificial intelligence, big data, and blockchain technologies. He said fostering start-up ecosystems and embedding digital solutions in commerce would accelerate business optimization and open new avenues for shared growth.

Dehghan Dehnavi stressed that the SCO’s emphasis on an “open, transparent, fair, inclusive, and non-discriminatory” multilateral trading system reflected members’ collective will to counter unilateral restrictions and to uphold a fair global order.

“Iran firmly believes in the SCO’s capacity to deliver sustainable economic growth,” he concluded, reaffirming Tehran’s commitment to fully implement the statement’s provisions and turn them into tangible results for the peoples of the region.

EF/MA