On 5 October 2020, SCO Secretary-General Vladimir Norov visited the office of the Multifunctional Trade and Economic Platform for the SCO Countries in Chongqing. He gained an insight into the Platform's new action programme and inspected its new office on the 15th floor of a modern skyscraper in the city's Liangjiang New Area, provided by the district administration free of charge.
The Multifunctional Platform's 1,060 square metre office can incubate companies from the SCO countries.
On 24 August 2019, representatives of the Liangjiang Administrative Committee, the Secretariat of the SCO Business Council and the Chongqing Heqing Industrial Group Co signed an agreement on establishing the Multifunctional Trade and Economic Platform for the SCO Countries at the 2nd Smart China Expo. This was done to facilitate the cost-effective economic development of SCO countries' national economies.
The main aim of the Platform is to help create a new regional trade development model, to forge a comprehensive trade ecosystem between the SCO countries, cities and regions and to provide various consultative services to companies from the SCO countries in line with the Shanghai Spirit's principles and with due consideration for SCO countries' distinguishing features as well as to support the platform's resident participants from the SCO countries at every stage of export operations.
There are plans to launch cooperation with over 200 cities and regions in 18 SCO countries within the Platform's framework and also to provide online and offline assistance to over 2,000 companies searching for partners and wanting to display their products and sell them in the SCO and ASEAN countries. Total annual volumes of online and offline trade, warehouse storage and distribution transactions, as regards SCO goods, should total at least 20 percent of bilateral trade between the SCO countries.
Apart from facilitating the rapid development of business and foreign trade, the Platform will directly promote the development of tourism, cultural exchanges, technology transfers and expanded employment within the SCO. The Platform is to open officially in November 2020.
Chongqing, a municipality under the direct administration of the central government of the People's Republic of China, is the country's largest city with a population of 33 million and a vital transport hub linking eastern China with its western areas via the Yangtze River and the China-Central Asia-Europe Railway as well as with the ASEAN member states. The Belt and Road route and the Yangtze Economic Belt intersect here. The city also is a strategic centre for the development of western China and expands construction of an international logistics centre, port and inland facilities.
In 2020, the Chengdu- Chongqing city cluster became one of the most powerful economic drivers with an area of 185,000 square km and a population of over 120 million (almost 6.9 percent of the entire population of China).
In 2017, the cluster's GDP reached $753 billion or about 6.2 percent of the national GDP. The city's Liangjiang New Area was established on 18 June 2010 and became the centre of China's experimental free trade zone and the centre of the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Demonstration Initiative on Strategic Connectivity.