It was supposed to have created the world’s largest commercial space, to have massively boosted trade, and to sharply improve competitiveness, giving the Continent’s companies the domestic base that enabled them to take on the world.
An economic bloc that includes several ex-Soviet nations along with Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey held a summit Thursday, with leaders vowing to further expand trade and economic ties. Members of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), who met in Uzbekistan's capital of Tashkent, discussed plans for speeding regional economic integration. “Our vast region, which is home to half a billion people, has a great potential for developing cooperation in trade, economy, industry, investment, innovation and transport,” the summit's host, Uzbekistan's President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, said in a speech at the summit.
Oil powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been invited to become members of the BRICS group of developing nations in its first expansion in over a decade.