Kyrgyzstan in the SCO: how Bishkek turned its chairmanship into a growth agenda

Bishkek is hosting the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit this week as current chair of the organisation, with heads of state from 21 countries expected as attendees in the Kyrgyz capital.

It is an anniversary meeting: the SCO was founded 25 years ago with economic and security cooperation at its core. It has since become the largest regional organisation in the world, covering almost a quarter of the globe's land area, close to half of the world's population, and about one-third of global GDP when measured by purchasing power parity (PPP).

The SCO began in 1996 as the Shanghai Five, a group of five states with Kyrgyzstan among them, which together with Uzbekistan founded the organisation with six members in 2001. Today the SCO has grown to 10 member states — Belarus, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — as well as two observer states and 15 dialogue partners, while its geography has stretched from Eurasia into the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia.

Kyrgyzstan has held the chair since the Tianjin summit in September 2025, under a motto President Sadyr Japarov proposed there: «25 Years of the SCO: Together Towards Sustainable Peace, Development and Prosperity». The chairmanship set itself five priorities which, in addition to security and humanitarian concerns, included advancing economic cooperation, digital transformation, and environmental protection and climate response.

From security to economic integration

From its origins as a regional security agreement, the SCO has increasingly focused its agenda on deepening trade and economic ties in Eurasia. The effect has been significant: for six out of 10 member countries, the SCO constitutes over half of overall foreign trade.

For Kyrgyzstan, trade with SCO countries more than doubled between 2021 and 2025, and in January-April 2026 it exceeded USD 3.7 billion. Overall, the SCO accounts for over 60% of Kyrgyzstan's foreign trade turnover.

Trade on that scale requires streamlining the infrastructure and logistics that connect the region. During its presidency, Kyrgyzstan has advanced tech-driven initiatives to facilitate trade, including cooperation on digitalising permits for international road transport among SCO members, and launched a pilot electronic queuing system for trucks on the Kyrgyz-Chinese border.

In prior years, Kyrgyzstan supported intra-bloc trade with the launch of a digital customs platform called Smart Bazhy, which decreased the time for releasing goods from five hours to one. These kinds of initiatives are especially important for landlocked countries in Central Asia, including Kyrgyzstan — where road transport accounts for 95% of freight movement nationwide.

As part of the broader push to strengthen connectivity among SCO member states, two large-scale logistics projects are being carried out in partnership with China: the 523-kilometre China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan railway and the Barskoon–Bedel highway linking Kyrgyzstan to Aksu in China's Xinjiang region. Together, these projects are expected to considerably reduce transit times across the SCO space and are slated for completion in 2030–2031.

Advancing multi-sectoral collaboration

The SCO's agenda extends far beyond logistics to cover cooperation on a wide range of fields, spanning joint investment forums and sectoral initiatives in digital trade, renewable energy, manufacturing and healthcare — all of which underpin the bloc's economic integration.

Kyrgyzstan has placed a major focus on promoting business development and attracting investment to the region. In June, a new SCO Regional Project Support Centre opened in Bishkek — the first platform in Kyrgyzstan dedicated specifically to supporting investment, infrastructure, and international projects within the SCO.

The country also supports the initiative to create the SCO Development Bank to fund infrastructure and other projects and facilitate settlements in national currencies. Consensus on the matter was reached during the 2025 SCO summit in China; since then, Kyrgyzstan hosted several consultations on the bank's development and proposed locating its headquarters in Bishkek.

Digital transformation and AI

Frontier technologies were another key focus during Kyrgyzstan's SCO chairmanship, with member states advancing talks on AI, digital transformation and ICT cooperation. At a meeting in Bishkek in April, ministry heads of SCO countries approved a concept to create data processing centres and boost computing and AI capabilities inside the region.

Highlighting these coordinated efforts at the national level, Kyrgyzstan launched an AI Supercluster project to provide a high-performance environment for technological development and innovation. Plans were also announced to create a domestically developed multilingual AI model aimed at offering «smart» public services for citizens, including through the introduction of personal AI assistants.

The chairmanship also promoted youth participation in the digital agenda. Kyrgyzstan hosted the SCO Youth Forum in the Digital Sphere to advance cooperation and knowledge exchange in digital technologies, as well as a Youth Forum on Tourism Development where delegates put forward a proposal to create a unified digital platform for tourism in the SCO.

Energy and the green agenda

Energy and the green agenda featured prominently in Kyrgyzstan's SCO chairmanship, reflecting the country's ambition to position itself as a regional hub for clean energy investment and cooperation.

Environmental representatives from member states approved a joint initiative to improve air quality during an April meeting in Bishkek, with glacier preservation and water resources on the same agenda — subjects with obvious weight for a country that is more than 90% mountainous. Delegation participants also took part in a tree-planting event at Kyrgyzstan's Ala-Archa State Nature Park, underscoring the country's commitment to the SCO Green Belt initiative aimed at protecting forest zones and natural ecosystems.

Also during the year, SCO members' energy ministers approved two draft statements — one on energy conservation and efficiency, another on energy systems — ahead of the SCO summit in Bishkek. Kyrgyzstan's own weight here lies in hydropower, which accounts for nearly 90% of the electricity it produces.

The country aims to increase renewable generation to 1.2-1.5 billion kWh in 2026, against a baseline of 450 to 500 million kWh. In support of these aims, Kyrgyzstan brought eight hydropower plants online last year in addition to a 100 MW solar power plant. The largest project still ahead is the Kambarata-1, a 1,860 MW hydropower plant on Kyrgyzstan's Naryn River, which Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are building together.

Turning an agenda into growth

For Kyrgyzstan, this year's chairmanship has become a platform to advance business and investment cooperation in the region as well as to highlight its own investment appeal. At the SCO-2026 Investment Business Forum in Bishkek in June, the country signed 12 investment and trade agreements totalling USD 150 million.

This reflects the broader trend of investors increasingly paying attention to the Kyrgyz market. Foreign direct investment in Kyrgyzstan more than doubled in 2025, reaching USD 642 million versus USD 255 million in 2024, and increasing more than tenfold from its 2022 level of about USD 55 million. The first quarter of 2026 alone brought in USD 386.8 million, up 34.2% year on year. The effect reaches the labour market, too, as the country created 38,891 jobs in the first three months of this year, with the vast majority of them permanent.

Kyrgyzstan's agenda for its SCO chairmanship paved the way for new initiatives and infrastructure to support investment, business growth and innovation.

Tamchy SFIT, launched this year, has become yet another instrument to support this growth: a special jurisdiction on Kyrgyzstan's Lake Issyk-Kul built on English common law, connecting global business to the trade, investment and logistics opportunities of a fast-connecting region. With the SCO widening the space for new partnerships, Tamchy gives businesses from the region and beyond a new place to thrive.