BISHKEK (24.kg news agency) – “Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan believe that the SCO should create its bank”, the Eurasian Development Bank Chairman of the Board Dmitry Pankin says at a meeting with journalists.

Dmitry Pankin

According to him, Russia has proposed to transform the EDB into SCO Bank. However, Bishkek and Tashkent did not agree, but the EDB hasn’t yet abandoned this idea.

“We will continue to promote the idea of transforming the EDB into the SCO bank. Concerning the matter, it all depends on whether we find a consensus with all participants or not. If we can prove that the fears of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are excessive, then the idea has a right to exist and the EDB will be transformed. If not, then the SCO bank and the Eurasian Development Bank will be two separate projects”, Dmitry Pankin noted.

The bank’s concept offers possibilities to finance projects both in the SCO member states and its observer countries such as Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.

One of the largest infrastructural projects that the bank is eyeing is the financing of a potential $30 bln oil and gas pipeline from Russia to India. Overland hydrocarbon transportation from Russia to India can be organized only through the territory of transit states such as China or Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The SCO summit held in Dushanbe in September 2014 instructed the governments of the organization’s member states to complete work on drafting the SCO’s development strategy until 2025 and submit it to the SCO Council of the Heads of State, which will convene in Ufa in July 2015.