The realization of the Sustainable Development Goals helps fulfill key tasks of Eurasian integration. Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Commission Mikhail Myasnikovich made the relevant statement during the online high-level discussion on harnessing inter-regional integration for the SDGs on May 20. The discussion was organized by Belarus, Barbados, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
According to Mikhail Myasnikovich, the Eurasian Economic Union consists of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and the Eurasian Economic Commission and pays close attention to helping the member states achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The Eurasian Economic Union Treaty and fundamental documents of the Eurasian Economic Union cover all the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 108 out of the 169 key tasks of the goals.
The Eurasian Economic Union became the first regional association to prepare a comprehensive report on reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. The report was presented at a high-level political forum of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 2017. A statistics report on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in the Eurasian Economic Union region was released in 2019.
Mikhail Myasnikovich stressed that the Eurasian Economic Commission had initiated the development of methods to evaluate the Sustainable Development Goals in the Eurasian Economic Union. It is a brand new model that takes into account supranational measures and will allow looking at the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals from the point of view of integration processes. “We are ready to share the accumulated experience with partners,” he said.
The achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals helps realize key tasks of Eurasian integration, promote deeper cooperation between the countries, and ensure their sustainable economic growth. “For instance, an exceptionally high level of food security has been ensured in the Eurasian Economic Union largely thanks to tight cooperation in agribusiness. Even in the crisis year of 2020 agricultural output increased by more than 2%,” Mikhail Myasnikovich noted. “The Eurasian Economic Union demonstrates positive dynamics of the economy development indicators the Sustainable Development Goals specify. For the last few years the GDP per capita in all the member states has demonstrated positive growth. No decline was allowed even in 2020 which was a difficult year due to the pandemic.”
The volumes of mutual trade and freight transportation are on the rise in the Eurasian Economic Union. Thanks to smooth operation of railway administrations the volume of container transportation across the Eurasian Economic Union rose by more than 1.6 times in 2020.
Mikhail Myasnikovich also pointed out that industrial output increased by 16% over the period of five years of the Eurasian Economic Union's work. The processing industry where intellectual potential is primarily concentrated demonstrated growth in excess of 15%.
“Thanks to manufacturing cooperation and specialization of the manufacturing sector production increased both in 2020 and in 2021. It demonstrates the Eurasian Economic Union's real work on realizing such a Sustainable Development Goal as industrialization, innovations, and infrastructure,” Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Commission Mikhail Myasnikovich concluded.
