Iran’s acting president offers discussing SCO single currency creation

Tehran views the SCO as a major instrument for increasing the factor of multilateralization in the region, Mohammad Mokhber noted

Iran’s acting President Mohammad Mokhber has suggested that the introduction of single currency of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) based on ground-breaking technologies be seriously discussed.

“Beefing up economic cooperation between members may become one of major steps aimed at strengthening the SCO’ role globally and in the region. This includes expansion of the use of national currencies or [the creation] of common currency based on groundbreaking technologies, which is of the utmost interest and a serious cause for discussion,” he said at a meeting in the ‘SCO plus’ format.

Tehran views the SCO as a major instrument for increasing the factor of multilateralization in the region and it is committed to expansion of agreements for “strengthening the strategic regional cooperation with the SCO’s central role,” Mokhber said. “Political and geographic changes that occurred over the past decades, have raised the importance of developing transport routes and fortifying cooperation on transit issues. One of major routes of this scale is the North-South transit corridor, whose activization is number one on our agenda,” the Iranian politician said, adding that the use of the North-South corridor “may serve the goals of developing trade exchanges and lowering the cost and time of delivery of goods both for the sending and for the receiving side.”

An intergovernmental agreement on the creation of the multimodal transport corridor North-South spanning 7,200 km was signed by Russia, India and Iran in 2000. Later, the number of participants rose to 14. The project is aimed at attracting transit of cargo flows from India, Iran and the Persian Gulf countries through Russian territory to Europe. Currently the project unites several various transport systems of separate countries.

The SCO was founded on June 15, 2001, in Shanghai. Initially the organization included Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, while in 2017 they were joined by India and Pakistan. Tehran applied to join in 2008 and became a full-fledged member of the organization in July 2023. Belarus joined the group at this year’s summit.